CERES GEO Edition 4: Hourly Cloud and Radiation Properties from Meteosat-8

CER_GEO_Ed4_MET08_NH_V01.2 is a data product from NASA's SatCORPS and CERES projects providing hourly cloud micro-physical and radiation properties derived from the SEVIRI instrument on the Meteosat-8 geostationary satellite. The dataset, arranged in hourly netCDF-4 files, offers observations at 4 km resolution (sub-sampled to 8 km) over the Northern Hemisphere. CERES instruments, which have flown on multiple missions since 1997, are a key component of NASA's Earth Observing System, succeeding the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment.

Use Cases

• Modeling the Earth's radiation budget based on derived cloud and radiation properties.
• Analyzing the diurnal cycle of clouds over the Northern Hemisphere based on hourly temporal resolution.
• Studying cloud micro-physical properties like particle size and optical thickness based on algorithm-derived retrievals.
• Merging geostationary satellite data to create global cloud property estimates for flux calculations between CERES measurements.

Strengths

• Data is derived from the well-established CERES project, a key component of NASA's Earth Observing System with a lineage back to 1997.
• Provides high spatial resolution of 4 km at nadir, sub-sampled to 8 km.
• Offers high temporal resolution with hourly data files, suitable for diurnal cycle analysis.

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 noted as 'in progress', indicating the dataset may be incomplete or evolving.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Derived from SEVIRI instrument data on the Meteosat-8 platform using Langley Research Center (LaRC) SatCORPS algorithms.

Time Range

Covers the period when Meteosat-8 was moved to 41° E; specific start/end dates are not provided.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 21:41:13.870166; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Northern Hemisphere, as observed by the Meteosat-8 geostationary satellite.