A256-08
Updates of MERRA-2 Data and Services at NASA GES DISC

Thursday, 17 December 2020: 07:21
Virtual
Suhung Shen1, Binita KC2, Jay Su3, William L Teng4, Barbara Deshong3, Michael G Bosilovich5, Allison Collow6, Mahabal Hegde7, Lena Fornito Iredell4, Dave L. Meyer8 and Fan Fang9, (1)George Mason University Fairfax, Fairfax, VA, United States, (2)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, GES DISC, Greenbelt, United States, (3)ADNET Systems Inc. Greenbelt, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (4)NASA GES DISC (ADNET Systems Inc.), Greenbelt, MD, United States, (5)Earth Sciences Division, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (6)Universities Space Research Association Greenbelt, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (7)NASA GSFC GES DISC (ADNET Systems), Greenbelt, MD, United States, (8)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, GES DISC, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (9)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States
Abstract:
Over 40 years of NASA climate reanalysis datasets from the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2) are available at the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC). In addition to being used in traditional weather and climate research, MERRA-2 is also widely used in application studies of, e.g., wind and solar energy, air quality and health, flood and drought, and heat waves.

Two new MERRA-2 datasets were recently added at the GES DISC: (1) climate statistics derived from MERRA-2 daily data to assist in the analysis of extreme temperature and precipitation events and of large-scale meteorological patterns from 1980 to the present and (2) gridded satellite and conventional observations processed in the MERRA-2 system, along with key statistics derived from the data assimilation, to help better understand how the quality of observations directly affect the reanalysis data.

The GES DISC focuses its efforts on continually improving existing data services and to develop new data tools to satisfy various user communities. The newly added features include the following:

  • Time series service: This is a new service for MERRA-2 data, which enables the easy and fast access of long-term hourly or daily time series at a location for popular parameters. The data is saved in a single file in Ascii format with a user- friendly structure.
  • New analytic functions in the subsetter interface: Options for downloading daily minimum and maximum values have been added into the subsetter interface, in addition to the existing daily mean option, for all MERRA-2 and MERRA sub-daily products. Data format conversion to GeoTIFF has been implemented.
  • New variables in Giovanni: Most monthly variables have been integrated into Giovanni, GES DISC’s online visualization and analysis tool. Due to the large data volume, hourly variables were selected based on user requests.
  • More online information: New MERRA-2 documentation has been added: Data How-To, Data in Action, and FAQ.

This presentation overviews two new MERRA-2 datasets and illustrates the new features of data services through a number of case studies. MERRA-2 data and services can be found at https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets?project=MERRA-2.

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