Surveying the Ecosystem of NASA GMAO's Product Suite - A Focus on Reanalysis

NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) produces multiple near real-time (NRT) state of the art global atmospheric and constituent model datasets (GEOS-FP, GEOS-CF). It also produces historic reanalysis datasets, such as MERRA-2, for a broad spectrum of applications worldwide assimilating best available in-situ and spaced-based meteorological and aerosol observations. MERRA-2 spans the time-period from 1980 to present, while running a few weeks behind real-time. Also within the ecosystem of GMAO products is GEOS-IT (GEOS for Instrument Teams). Configured specially for NASA Instrument Teams and thus not for general external research consumption, GEOS-IT provides a NRT semi-frozen ancillary meteorological dataset in support of science team retrievals. GEOS-IT products maintain the same relatively coarse 50 km resolution as FP-IT, the previous 2014 heritage system it has replaced, and intentionally excludes some data types produced by the instruments it supports. Like FP-IT, GEOS-IT spans NASA’s entire Earth Observing System (EOS) Mission (1998 to present) and will ensure long term continuity and reproducibility in support of NASA science Instrument Teams. The GMAO will soon release MERRA-21C, a new reanalysis covering the same EOS Mission period. MERRA-21C will use a more advanced analysis algorithm, an expanded observing system including all-sky radiance assimilation, and will run at a finer 25 km resolution.