diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 8742eb02cc6..9302cb656a1 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@ We are slowly change the license from NCSA opensource to BSD-3 to help with publ
 
 - Using R4.0 and R4.1 tags to build PEcAn. Default is now 4.1
 - Database connections consistently use `DBI::dbConnect` instead of the deprecated `dplyr::src_postgres` (#2881). This change should be invisible to most users, but it involved converting a lot of internal variables from `bety$con` to `con`. If you see errors involving these symbols it means we missed a place, so please report them as bugs.
+- Update URL for MERRA downloads (#2888)
 - PEcAn.logger is now BSD-3 License
 - Skipped ICOS and MERRA download tests when running in github actions
 
diff --git a/modules/data.atmosphere/R/download.MERRA.R b/modules/data.atmosphere/R/download.MERRA.R
index a21502a38c9..706a3240ea2 100644
--- a/modules/data.atmosphere/R/download.MERRA.R
+++ b/modules/data.atmosphere/R/download.MERRA.R
@@ -139,6 +139,7 @@ download.MERRA <- function(outfolder, start_date, end_date,
         ncdf4::ncvar_put(loc, merra_flux_vars[r,][["CF_name"]], x,
                          start = c(1, 1, start), count = c(1, 1, 24))
       }
+      ncdf4::nc_close(nc)
       lfofile <- file.path(outfolder, sprintf("merra-lfo-%s.nc", as.character(date)))
       nc <- ncdf4::nc_open(lfofile)
       for (r in seq_len(nrow(merra_lfo_vars))) {
@@ -146,7 +147,6 @@ download.MERRA <- function(outfolder, start_date, end_date,
         ncdf4::ncvar_put(loc, merra_lfo_vars[r,][["CF_name"]], x,
                          start = c(1, 1, start), count = c(1, 1, 24))
       }
-
       ncdf4::nc_close(nc)
     }
 
@@ -176,7 +176,9 @@ get_merra_date <- function(date, latitude, longitude, outdir, overwrite = FALSE)
   month <- as.numeric(gsub(dpat, "\\2", date))
   day <- as.numeric(gsub(dpat, "\\3", date))
   dir.create(outdir, showWarnings = FALSE, recursive = TRUE)
-  version <- if (year >= 2011) {
+  version <- if (year == 2020 & month == 9) {
+    401
+  } else if (year >= 2011) {
     400
   } else if (year >= 2001) {
     300