# 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. tropical meteorology and climatology; weather and climate; remote sensing and model data and services; TRMM; GPM; MERRA-2 2020 IEEE/RSJ Web Conference 2020 12  
In other words, in such a state of the atmosphere, air density depends only on pressure (or height) and the geostrophic wind is independent of height [4]. The tropics are characterized as smaller seasonal temperature and wind direction variations as well as smaller horizontal gradients of sea surface temperature, compared to those in the mid-latitudes [5]. The Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) [4], visible on the daily infrared imagery of geostationary satellites, is a prominent feature in the tropics. There is a large variety of weather phenomena which occur or originate in the tropics such as thunderstorms, tropical cyclones (e.g., hurricanes, typhoons), African easterly waves, Sahara dust storms, and the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) [6]. The tropics are the birthplaces for tropical cyclones and El Nino events that can influence other regions outside the tropics. Convective heating in the tropics is a principal driver for atmospheric circulations ranging from mesoscale, large-scale to global scale (e.g., [7,8]). Nonetheless, it is important to understand tropical weather and climate, especially in a changing climate. Observations play a key role not only in demonstrating direct evidence for improving such understanding, but also alternatively providing data for model development and evaluation. However, carrying out observations over vast oceans and in remote continents still remains a major challenge as of today since it is often expensive and difficult to develop, deploy and maintain in situ observation networks. Due to the lack of observations of the short- and long-term, many weather and climate phenomena are still poorly understood. Satellites, on the other hand, provide observations from the space on a global scale. Frequently, understanding and modeling weather events in the tropics also requires observations from various disciplines other than meteorology such as oceanography and land surface conditions to develop a holistic view.