AIRS Aqua Support Retrieval with HSB Microwave Data

Global atmospheric profiles from the AIRS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite, combined with the AMSU and HSB microwave sensors. The dataset contains 100 vertical level profiles from 1100 to 0.016 mb, including trace gas abundances and intermediate retrieval outputs. It covers a limited five-month period from September 2002 to January 2003 due to the failure of the HSB instrument.

Use Cases

• Analyzing high-resolution vertical profiles of temperature and humidity across 100 pressure levels.
• Examining research products like the abundance of atmospheric trace gases.
• Generating forward radiance models using detailed retrieval intermediate outputs.
• Studying atmospheric conditions using combined visible, infrared, and microwave sensor data from a polar-orbiting platform.

Strengths

• Provides 100 vertical resolution levels, which simplifies forward radiance generation.
• Contains intermediate outputs like microwave-only retrievals and detailed quality assessment information.
• Data is generated globally at all locations as Standard Products, with 240 granules per day.

Limitations

• Temporal coverage is limited to only five months (Sep 2002 - Jan 2003) due to HSB instrument failure.
• Sources disagree on license information: one lists 'other-license-specified', others list 'unknown' or 'None'.
• Specific column names, row counts, and dataset size are unknown across all sources.

Provenance

Source

GES_DISC

Collection Method

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

Time Range

September 2002 through January 2003

Freshness

2003-02-05 23:59:59.999000

Geography

Global