Data sources

NASA POWER gives the main monthly records for 13 measures from 1981: temperature, rainfall, soil moisture, humidity, wind, sunlight, cloud cover, haze and ozone. Its weather values come from NASA's MERRA-2 model on a grid about 50 km across; haze, ozone and sunlight build on NASA MODIS, OMI and CERES satellite data. Every request is stored with its URL, date and a SHA-256 checksum.

Rainfall trends are checked against NASA's other rainfall records over the same years: NASA GPCP (satellites plus rain gauges, from 1981), NASA GPM IMERG satellite rainfall (from 2001) and NASA POWER. NASA's GLDAS land model gives topsoil water and runoff from 2001. Earth Pulse adds NASA JPL MUR ocean temperature, and Cool Charlotte uses NASA/USGS Landsat. Natural Earth gives the place catalog; OpenStreetMap and Esri imagery are map backgrounds only.

Continue exploring

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• How the analysis works
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• Earth Pulse: where is our planet changing?
• Ground check: does NASA's record match a real thermometer?
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Source documentation: NASA POWER monthly API and Natural Earth terms of use.