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

Satellite-derived cloud micro-physical and radiation properties are collected hourly from the SEVIRI instrument on the Meteosat-9 geostationary platform. The data is produced by NASA's Langley Research Center in support of the CERES project, using the SatCORPS algorithms and MERRA-2 reanalysis for atmospheric input. Observations are at 3 km resolution at nadir and sub-sampled to 6 km, stored 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 the MERRA-2 reanalysis inputs.
• Studying diurnal cycles of cloud properties from hourly geostationary data.

Strengths

• Data is derived from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) instrument on a dedicated satellite platform.
• Observations are provided at a high spatial resolution of 3 km at nadir.
• 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.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Langley Research Center (LaRC).

Collection Method

Derived from Meteosat-9 SEVIRI imager data using SatCORPS algorithms.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 22:09:41.873598; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Southern Hemisphere, from the Meteosat-9 geostationary satellite.