AIRS Aqua Atmospheric Profiles with HSB Retrievals

AIRS/Aqua L2 Standard Physical Retrieval (AIRH2RET) provides atmospheric profiles retrieved from the AIRS, AMSU, and HSB instruments aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. The dataset contains estimates of cloud and surface properties, plus vertical profiles of temperature, water vapor, ozone, carbon monoxide, and methane with associated error estimates. It covers a specific five-month period from September 2002 to January 2003 due to the failure of the HSB instrument.

Use Cases

• Analyzing vertical temperature profiles across 28 atmospheric levels from 1100 mb to 0.1 mb.
• Studying water vapor distribution across 14 atmospheric layers between 1100 mb and 50 mb.
• Investigating spatial distributions of ozone, carbon monoxide, and methane concentrations.
• Examining cloud properties and surface characteristics at a horizontal resolution of 50 km.
• Validating atmospheric models using error estimates associated with each retrieved quantity.

Strengths

• Provides multi-instrument retrievals combining visible, infrared, and microwave sensors (AIRS+AMSU+HSB).
• Includes detailed vertical profiling with temperature at 28 levels and moisture at 14 layers.
• Contains error estimates for all retrieved quantities, supporting uncertainty analysis.

Limitations

• Temporal coverage is limited to only five months (September 2002 to January 2003).
• Cross-source conflict: the license is listed as 'other-license-specified' on datagov but is unknown on nasa_earthdata.
• Specific row count, file size, and complete column list are unknown across all platforms.

Provenance

Source

NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC)

Collection Method

Retrieved from satellite instruments: Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU), and Humidity Sounder for Brazil (HSB) aboard the Aqua satellite.

Time Range

September 2002 to January 2003

Freshness

2003-02-05 23:59:59.999000

Geography

Global coverage from Aqua satellite orbit.