NOAA-16 AMSU-A Satellite Atmospheric Temperature and Moisture Profiles

Data from 2000 onward provides daily atmospheric temperature and moisture profiles from the surface to ~45 km altitude. The dataset contains 15-channel passive microwave radiometer swath data from the NOAA-16 satellite, stored in daily HDF-EOS files. Each file includes brightness temperature arrays for 15 channels along with corresponding latitude, longitude, and time arrays.

Use Cases

• Validating numerical weather prediction models using 15-channel brightness temperature profiles.
• Analyzing long-term trends in upper-air temperature and water vapor for climate studies.
• Assimilating swath-based geospatial data (latitude, longitude, time) into atmospheric reanalysis products.
• Studying atmospheric phenomena by correlating microwave brightness temperatures with physical temperature and moisture profiles.

Strengths

• Provides vertical atmospheric profiles from surface to ~45 km using 15 distinct microwave channels.
• Offers long-term data coverage starting from the satellite launch on 21 September 2000.
• Data is structured in daily files containing geospatial (latitude, longitude) and temporal coordinates for each observation.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, and specific column names are unavailable across all sources.
• Sources conflict on license information (other-license-specified vs. None) and last update date (2026 vs. 2009).

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) polar orbiting spacecraft NOAA-16, processed by GHRC_DAAC.

Collection Method

Passive microwave radiometer measurements from a sun-synchronous near-polar orbit, stored as daily HDF-EOS swath files.

Time Range

2000 onward

Freshness

2026-03-13 16:13:34.124340

Geography

Global coverage from NOAA-16 satellite swath.