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Description
Eight-day global atmospheric data from the AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite, gridded at 1-degree resolution. This product provides averaged means, standard deviations, and counts for thermodynamic parameters like temperature profiles and cloud properties, as well as trace gases including carbon monoxide, methane, and ozone. The dataset is produced by the GES DISC and is available on NASA Earthdata and Data.gov.
Use Cases
Analyzing global skin temperature trends using the 'Skin Temperature' parameter.
Studying atmospheric water vapor distribution via the 'Profiles of Air Temperature and Water Vapor' and 'Column Precipitable Water' variables.
Monitoring trace gas concentrations like carbon monoxide and methane with the 'Total Amounts' data.
Investigating cloud characteristics and their vertical distribution using 'Cloud Amount/Frequency', 'Cloud Height', and 'Cloud Vertical Distribution' features.
Creating custom multi-day composite maps by utilizing the integer 'counts' grid map provided with each file.
Strengths
Data is derived from a high-resolution grating spectrometer (R = 1200) on a dedicated satellite platform.
Provides three complementary data layers per parameter: mean values, standard deviations, and input counts for each 1x1 degree grid cell.
Covers a complete global spatial extent from -180.0 to +180.0 deg longitude and -90.0 to +90.0 deg latitude.
Limitations
Key metadata such as total row count, file size, and specific column names are not provided by any source.
Sources disagree on license information; NASA Earthdata lists it as unknown, while Data.gov lists 'other-license-specified'.
The temporal coverage start date and total time range are not specified.
Provenance
Source
GES_DISC
Collection Method
Retrievals from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on the EOS Aqua satellite, averaged and binned into 8-day global grids.
Freshness
2026-03-13 19:03:56.665294
Geography
Global, 1x1 degree grid cells from -180.0 to +180.0 longitude, -90.0 to +90.0 latitude.
Variable names in the data files must be inferred from a separate Processing File Description document. License terms are unclear and conflict between sources.