Aqua Satellite Near Real Time Atmospheric Brightness Temperatures

AIRABRAD_NRT_005 provides near real time Level 1B calibrated brightness temperatures from the AMSU-A microwave sounder aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. Data is organized into granules containing 6 minutes of observations, with a spatial resolution of 30 footprints across track by 45 lines along track. The dataset is produced by the GES DISC to meet the three-hour latency requirements of the LANCE system.

Use Cases

• Correcting infrared AIRS measurements for cloud effects using AMSU-A's 15 microwave channels (23-90 GHz).
• Providing atmospheric temperature profiles in cloudy conditions where infrared sensors are obstructed.
• Supporting near real time weather analysis and short-term forecasting with data available within three hours of observation.
• Studying atmospheric phenomena by analyzing geolocated brightness temperatures from a polar-orbiting platform.

Strengths

• Provides data with a latency of under three hours for time-sensitive applications.
• Contains 15 distinct microwave channels (13 from 50-90 GHz, 2 from 23-32 GHz) for atmospheric sounding.
• Granules have a defined spatial structure of 30 footprints across track by 45 lines along track, representing 6 minutes of data.
• Microwave measurements penetrate non-precipitating clouds, providing atmospheric data where infrared sensors fail.

Limitations

• Uses predictive rather than definitive ephemeris/attitude data, which may affect geolocation accuracy.
• Granules may be produced without adjacent temporal data if preceding/following granules are unavailable within 5 minutes.
• Key metadata such as row count, file size, and specific column names are not provided by any source.

Provenance

Source

GES_DISC, NASA

Collection Method

Data collected by the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-A (AMSU-A) instrument aboard the EOS Aqua satellite.

Freshness

2026-03-13 19:08:59.445674

Geography

Global coverage from a polar-orbiting platform.