AIRS Aqua Daily Atmospheric Support Product

Atmospheric Infrared Sounder data provides daily Level 3 support products from the Aqua satellite. These products contain intermediary and input fields for atmospheric sounding, including values from visible, infrared, and microwave sensors combined with AMSU and HSB. The dataset is managed by NASA's GES DISC, with a last known update in 2016.

Use Cases

• Analyzing intermediary atmospheric temperature profiles from infrared and microwave sensor inputs.
• Studying daily humidity soundings from combined AIRS, AMSU, and HSB sensor groups.
• Investigating spatial patterns of atmospheric constituents using 1-degree gridded support fields.
• Comparing unvalidated support product values against fully validated standard products.

Strengths

• Data originates from a grating spectrometer with a resolution (R) of 1200 aboard the EOS Aqua platform.
• Products combine measurements from three distinct sensor types: visible, infrared, and microwave.

Limitations

• Fields are not fully validated and may include values from failed retrievals due to unavailable quality control.
• Conflicting last updated dates exist between sources (2016 vs. 2026), indicating potential metadata inconsistency.
• Specific column names, row counts, and dataset size are unknown across all platforms.

Provenance

Source

GES_DISC

Collection Method

Data gathered by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard the EOS Aqua satellite.

Freshness

2016-09-25 23:59:59.999000

Geography

Global coverage at a 1 degree x 1 degree spatial resolution.