AIRS/Aqua Daily Atmospheric Profiles on a 1-Degree Grid

Daily global atmospheric profiles from the AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite, gridded into 1-degree cells. The dataset provides averaged geophysical parameters, standard deviations, and input counts for each daily file, covering both ascending and descending orbits. It is produced by NASA's Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC).

Use Cases

• Analyzing daily global temperature profiles using the gridded mean values.
• Studying atmospheric humidity variability via the standard deviation maps.
• Mapping global cloud properties and surface skin temperature from the Level 3 retrievals.
• Investigating spatial data coverage gaps using the integer counts map for each grid cell.
• Comparing atmospheric soundings across satellite orbits (ascending vs. descending).

Strengths

• Provides daily global coverage with a consistent 1-degree x 1-degree spatial resolution.
• Includes statistical measures (mean and standard deviation) alongside raw data counts for each grid cell.
• Data points within a grid box are temporally coincident, improving analysis consistency.

Limitations

• Daily Level 3 products have gaps ('gores') between satellite paths with no coverage.
• Specific row counts, file sizes, and column names are not provided by any source.
• The license is listed as 'other-license-specified' on Data.gov but is unknown on NASA Earthdata, indicating a conflict.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing data from the AIRS grating spectrometer on the EOS Aqua platform, averaged and binned into daily global grids.

Freshness

2026-03-13 16:07:53.029714

Geography

Global coverage from -180.0 to +180.0 degrees longitude and -90.0 to +90.0 degrees latitude.