d018·dataset
A weather & climate record back to 1980
MERRA-2 Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications
GES DISC MERRA-2 cloud-native 0.5° × 0.625° hourly (instantaneous + time-averaged collections) NetCDF atmosphereclimateaerosolswater-cycle
NASA's flagship atmospheric reanalysis. 100+ collections covering atmospheric state, aerosols (GOCART), land-surface, and ocean-atmosphere fluxes. Foundation for climate-change attribution + boundary conditions.
MERRA-2 Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications
NASA’s flagship atmospheric reanalysis. 100+ collections covering atmospheric state, aerosols (GOCART), land-surface, and ocean-atmosphere fluxes. Foundation for climate-change attribution + boundary conditions.
Access
- Python (earthaccess):
short_name pattern M2* - Portal: https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets?keywords=MERRA-2
- Tool: Giovanni
Gotchas
- Many collections; pick by variable + temporal averaging
- Aerosol product (GOCART) has known biases over biomass burning
- Reanalysis = model+data assimilation, not direct observation
Sources
The access details, code, and sources below are kept in the original English for technical accuracy.
Quick access (cloud-direct)
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="M2*",
bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),
temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),
)
files = earthaccess.open(results) # stream from GES DISCBrowsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package. 📚 Problem Finder KB
1 matching entry in the Knowledge Base:
§14 Glossary
MERRA-2 M2T1NXSLV
GES DISC