SatCORPS CERES GEO: Hourly Cloud and Radiation Properties from Meteosat-9

Southern Hemisphere observations from the Meteosat-9 geostationary satellite provide hourly cloud microphysical and radiation properties. The data is derived from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) instrument using Langley Research Center SatCORPS algorithms at 3 km resolution, subsampled to 6 km, and is stored in netCDF-4 format. This product supports the NASA Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) project, which has flown instruments on satellites including TRMM, Terra, Aqua, Suomi NPP, and NOAA-20 since 1997.

Use Cases

• Modeling the Earth's diurnal radiation cycle based on hourly cloud property estimates.
• Analyzing cloud microphysical properties derived from geostationary satellite imager data.
• Estimating radiative fluxes between CERES instrument measurements using merged global cloud properties.
• Studying Southern Hemisphere atmospheric dynamics based on 3 km resolution satellite observations.

Strengths

• Data is derived from a specific, well-documented instrument (SEVIRI on Meteosat-9) and algorithm suite (Langley SatCORPS).
• Observations are provided at a high spatial resolution of 3 km at nadir.
• Product is part of the long-running CERES project, with a heritage dating to the 1997 TRMM mission.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Version 1.2 is noted as identical to version 1.0 with no algorithm changes, indicating potential lack of recent updates to the core data product.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Derived from SEVIRI instrument data on the Meteosat-9 platform using Langley Research Center SatCORPS algorithms.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 22:09:33.282261; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Southern Hemisphere