NASA Global Satellite and Model Data Products and Services for Tropical Meteorology and Climatology

Abstract

Satellite remote sensing and model data play an important role in research and applications of tropical meteorology and climatology over vast, data-sparse oceans and remote continents. Since the first weather satellite was launched by NASA in 1960, a large collection of NASA’s Earth science data is freely available to the research and application communities around the world, significantly improving our overall understanding of the Earth system and environment. Established in the mid-1980s, the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC), located in Maryland, USA, is a data archive center for multidisciplinary, satellite and model assimilation data products. As one of the 12 NASA data centers in Earth sciences, GES DISC hosts several important NASA satellite missions for tropical meteorology and climatology such as the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Mission and the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA). Over the years, GES DISC has developed data services to facilitate data discovery, access, distribution, analysis and visualization, including Giovanni, an online analysis and visualization tool without the need to download data and software. Despite many efforts for improving data access, a significant number of challenges remain, such as finding datasets and services for a specific research topic or project, especially for inexperienced users or users outside the remote sensing community. In this article, we list and describe major NASA satellite remote sensing and model datasets and services for tropical meteorology and climatology along with examples of using the data and services, so this may help users better utilize the information in their research and applications.