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Beta

Catalog datasets represent a fraction of data in use by active WMA projects. The team is working on including more datasets to provide a complete view of data-in-use. Let us know how your experience is!

Datasets

MERRA-Land

Domain: Climate

Variables: Soil moisture; Soil temperature; Land surface temperature

Spatial Resolution: 0.5 degrees by 0.667 degrees

Temporal Frequency: hourly

Temporal Coverage: 1979 - 2016

Spatial Extent: Global

Source: NASA

Update Frequency: NA

Update Detail: NA

Access:

Description:

NOTE: MERRA production has been discontiued with the completion of analyses through February 29, 2016.
MERRA-2 is now available.

MERRA-Land is a land-only (“off-line”) replay of the MERRA land model component with two key changes from MERRA:
1. MERRA-Land precipitation forcing is based on merging a gauge-based data product from the NOAA Climate Prediction Center with MERRA precipitation.
2. The Catchment land surface model used in MERRA-Land was updated from the “MERRA” version (used in GEOS-5.2.0) to the “Fortuna-2.5” version (used operationally in GEOS-5.7.2 since Aug 2011).
These two changes lead to various science improvements that are documented, for a preliminary version of the MERRA-Land data product, in Reichle and others, 2011 and, for the official MERRA-Land data product, in the MERRA-Land documentation.
With a few exceptions, the MERRA-Land data appear more accurate than the original MERRA estimates and are thus recommended for those interested in using MERRA output for land surface hydrological studies.

MERRA-Land is a land-only (“off-line”) replay of the MERRA land model component with two key changes from MERRA: MERRA-Land precipitation forcing is based on merging a gauge-based data product from the NOAA Climate Prediction Center with MERRA precipitation.
The MERRA-Land data product provides an improved set of land surface hydrological fields. Its “mld” collection of time-varying land surface fields is designed to include all fields that are present in the standard MERRA “lnd” collection and a few additional fields of interest for land surface research and applications, notably: (i) the 6-layer soil temperature profile; (ii) the gridded land surface temperature, and (iii) the gridded soil moisture in volumetric units (m3 m-3) as well as in dimensionless units of degree of saturation (or wetness), including the total profile soil moisture. Additional details can be found in the MERRA-Land documentation.

Citation:

Reichle, R.H., Koster, R.D., De Lannoy, G.J.M., Forman, B.A., Liu, Q., Mahanama, S.P.P., Toure, A., 2011, Assessment and enhancement of MERRA land surface hydrology estimates, Journal of Climate, 24, 6322-6338, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-10-05033.1.