SatCORPS CERES GEO Edition 4: GOES-8 Southern Hemisphere Cloud and Radiation Data

Hourly cloud micro-physical and radiation properties derived from GOES-8 geostationary satellite imager data at 4 km resolution. The dataset, produced by NASA's Langley Research Center for the CERES project, is arranged in netCDF-4 files for each hour and supports the estimation of radiative fluxes between CERES instrument measurements. CERES instruments have been launched on multiple missions since 1997, including TRMM, Terra, Aqua, Suomi NPP, and NOAA-20.

Use Cases

• Modeling the Earth's diurnal radiation cycle based on hourly cloud property estimates.
• Analyzing cloud micro-physical properties over the Southern Hemisphere based on GOES-8 imager data.
• Estimating radiative fluxes for climate models based on merged geostationary satellite cloud properties.
• Studying long-term cloud and radiation trends by integrating this data with other CERES mission records.

Strengths

• Data is derived at a high spatial resolution of 4 km at nadir.
• Provides hourly temporal coverage for analyzing diurnal cycles.
• Produced by NASA Langley Research Center using established SatCORPS algorithms.
• Part of the long-running CERES project with instruments launched from 1997 to 2017.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data collection is stated as complete, limiting temporal coverage to the GOES-8 operational period.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Derived from GOES-8 Imager data using Langley Research Center SatCORPS algorithms.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 22:09:45.065755; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Southern Hemisphere