National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Goddard Space Flight Center

Arctic Fires Summer 2019 - fine particulates

The GMAO Research Site

The Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) supports NASA's Earth Science mission. Activities in Earth System modeling and data assimilation aim to maximize the impact of satellite observations on analyses and predictions of the atmosphere, ocean, land and cryosphere.

Science Snapshots

Science Snapshot Archive »

Assessing the Impact of Nearly 40 Years of Observations on Short-Range MERRA-2 Forecasts

The GMAO atmospheric assimilation system carries along with it the necessary ingredients to generate adjoint-based observation impacts. We use the adjoint of the GEOS general circulation model and the adjoint of the Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation analysis to evaluate observation impact for MERRA-2.

Fires in Latin America and Carbon Monoxide

In 2019, quite a large number of fires burned in the Amazon rainforests, the most intense blazes in almost a decade. Carbon monoxide (CO) is one byproduct of biomass burning. The included animation shows the evolution and transport of carbon monoxide (CO) using the GEOS model.

High Resolution GEOS Forecasts of Super Typhoon Hagibis

An experimental version of GEOS running with nearly 8× as many grid volumes at 6km horizontal resolution with 132 vertical levels and including non-hydrostatic dynamical effects, advanced convection, and cloud physics processes provides an improved representation of the mesoscale features of typhoon Hagibis.

American and European Heatwaves During Summer 2019

Throughout the entire month of June 2019, over 20% of Europe met the criteria defining a heatwave according to MERRA-2. Long time series are required in order to estimate climate statistics such as the percentiles of temperature, and the Modern Era retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2) is a tool that can be useful for such studies.