SatCORPS CERES GEO Edition 4 Himawari-9 Southern Hemisphere Version 1.4

Southern Hemisphere data from the Himawari-9 geostationary satellite provides hourly cloud micro-physical and radiation properties at 2 km nadir resolution, subsampled to 6 km. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration produced this data using the Langley Research Center SatCORPS algorithms, with atmospheric input from the MERRA-2 reanalysis. Files are available in netCDF-4 format for each hour.

Use Cases

• Modeling Earth's radiation budget based on derived cloud and radiation properties.
• Analyzing cloud micro-physical property evolution based on hourly geostationary satellite data.
• Validating atmospheric reanalysis models using satellite-retrieved cloud and radiation data.
• Studying diurnal cycles of cloud properties over the Southern Hemisphere.

Strengths

• Data is derived from the Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) instrument on the Himawari-9 platform.
• Observations are at 2 km resolution at nadir and provided hourly.
• Atmospheric input uses the GMAO MERRA-2 reanalysis, a specific and documented source.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the Himawari-9 satellite's coverage of the Southern Hemisphere.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Derived from Himawari-9 geostationary satellite imager data using Langley Research Center SatCORPS algorithms.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 21:41:51.377284; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Southern Hemisphere