MERRA-2

Global atmospheric reanalysis from NASA GMAO used as a shared meteorological backbone for hazard modeling.

Overview

MERRA-2 is a global atmospheric reanalysis that assimilates satellite and conventional observations into a numerical weather prediction system to produce gridded, time-continuous estimates of the atmospheric state.

In PyHazards it serves as a shared forcing and covariate source for weather-aware hazard workflows, especially when a project needs a stable long historical archive.

At a Glance

Provider

NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO)

Hazard Family

Shared Forcing

Source Role

Reanalysis

Coverage

Global

Geometry

Regular latitude-longitude grid

Spatial Resolution

~0.5 deg x 0.625 deg

Temporal Resolution

Hourly

Update Cadence

Published monthly with typical 2-3 week latency after month end

Period of Record

1980-present

Formats

NetCDF4

Inspection CLI

python -m pyhazards.datasets.merra2.inspection 20260101

Data Characteristics

  • Global coverage on a regular latitude-longitude grid.

  • Hourly meteorology with derived 3-hourly, daily, and monthly products.

  • Surface fields plus multi-level atmospheric profiles.

  • Common variables include near-surface temperature, humidity, wind, precipitation, and surface fluxes.

Typical Use Cases

  • Meteorological forcing for wildfire and multi-hazard prediction models.

  • Climate diagnostics and long-horizon environmental covariates.

  • Shared weather backbone for weather-climate benchmark pipelines.

Access

Use the links below to access the upstream source or its public documentation.

PyHazards Usage

Use this dataset through the public inspection or registry surface documented below.

This dataset is currently documented as an external or inspection-first source rather than a public load_dataset(...) entrypoint.

Inspection Workflow

Use the documented inspection path below to validate local files before training or analysis.

python -m pyhazards.datasets.merra2.inspection 20260101

  • Earthdata credentials are required when raw files are not already available locally.

Reference