SatCORPS CERES GEO: Cloud and Radiation Properties from GOES-18 Southern Hemisphere

SatCORPS CERES GEO Edition 4 data provides hourly cloud micro-physical and radiation properties derived from GOES-18 geostationary satellite imager data. The data is produced by NASA's Langley Research Center in support of the CERES project, using the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on the GOES-18 platform. Observations are at 2-km resolution at nadir and sub-sampled to 6 km, with files provided hourly in netCDF-4 format.

Use Cases

• Modeling Earth's radiation budget based on derived cloud and radiation properties.
• Analyzing cloud micro-physical property trends over the Southern Hemisphere.
• Validating atmospheric models using cloud retrievals informed by MERRA-2 reanalysis data.
• Studying diurnal cycles of cloud properties from hourly geostationary observations.

Strengths

• Data is derived from the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) on the GOES-18 satellite, a known operational platform.
• Observations are at 2-km resolution at nadir, providing detailed spatial information.
• Version 1.4 uses the GMAO MERRA-2 reanalysis for atmospheric input, a specific and documented model version.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale ML tasks.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Derived from GOES-18 ABI imager data using Langley Research Center SatCORPS algorithms.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 21:42:04.073978; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Southern Hemisphere