AIRS/Aqua AMSU: Geolocated Microwave Brightness Temperatures

AIRS/Aqua L1B AMSU (A1/A2) geolocated and calibrated brightness temperatures V005 (AIRABRAD) is a satellite dataset from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It contains 6-minute data granules covering 30 footprints across track by 45 lines along track. The data was last updated on 2026-03-13.

Use Cases

• Correcting infrared measurements for cloud effects based on microwave transparency described in the dataset.
• Atmospheric temperature sounding in cloudy conditions based on the AMSU-A instrument's capabilities.
• Analyzing microwave spectral signatures from 13 channels (50-90 GHz) and 2 channels (23-32 GHz) mentioned in the description.
• Integrating multi-sensor data for atmospheric profiles based on the combined AIRS, AMSU, and HSB sounding group.

Strengths

• Data is produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, an authoritative source.
• Granules contain 6 minutes of data with a defined spatial footprint of 30 across track by 45 lines.
• AMSU-A provides 15 channels across two units (A1 and A2) for atmospheric sounding.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• File formats include JPEG, BIN, ISO, HTML, and PDF, which may require specialized tools for data extraction.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Collected by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) aboard the EOS Aqua satellite.

Time Range

Temporal coverage is not specified in the provided metadata.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 06:21:51.066715; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage from a polar-orbiting satellite platform.