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

Hourly cloud micro-physical and radiation properties derived from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) on the Meteosat-8 geostationary satellite over the Southern Hemisphere. The data set is arranged as files for each hour in netCDF-4 format, with observations at a 3 km resolution at nadir, sub-sampled to 9 km. This product was created by NASA's Langley Research Center using SatCORPS algorithms to support the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) project, a key component of the Earth Observing System.

Use Cases

• Modeling the Earth's radiation budget based on derived cloud and radiation properties.
• Analyzing the diurnal cycle of cloud microphysics over the Southern Hemisphere based on hourly data.
• Validating climate models using geostationary satellite-derived cloud property estimates.
• Studying cloud-aerosol interactions using micro-physical property retrievals.

Strengths

• Data collection is described as complete, providing a fixed temporal record.
• Observations are at a 3 km spatial resolution at nadir.
• Product is 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.
• Spatial coverage is limited to the Southern Hemisphere as observed by Meteosat-8.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Derived from SEVIRI instrument data on the Meteosat-8 platform using SatCORPS algorithms.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 21:40:46.400673; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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