SatCORPS CERES GEO: GOES-15 Northern Hemisphere Cloud and Radiation Properties

Northern Hemisphere cloud micro-physical and radiation properties derived hourly from GOES-15 geostationary satellite imager data. The data set, arranged as hourly files in netCDF-4 format, was produced by NASA's Langley Research Center using SatCORPS algorithms for the CERES project. CERES instruments, launched on missions from TRMM in 1997 to NOAA-20 in 2017, measure Earth's radiation budget.

Use Cases

• Modeling the Earth's radiation budget based on derived cloud and radiation properties.
• Analyzing diurnal cycles of cloud microphysics based on hourly temporal resolution.
• Studying spatial patterns of cloud properties over the Northern Hemisphere based on 4 km nadir resolution data.
• Validating climate models using geostationary satellite-derived flux estimates.

Strengths

• Data collection is complete, providing a finalized product.
• Observations are at a high spatial resolution of 4 km at nadir.
• Derived from a long-running CERES project with instruments launched between 1997 and 2017.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data is sub-sampled to 8 km, which may reduce detail for some analyses.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Derived from GOES-15 Imager data using Langley Research Center SatCORPS algorithms.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 21:42:34.320555; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Northern Hemisphere