AIRS3QPM provides monthly distributional summaries of atmospheric temperature, water vapor, and cloud fraction derived from the AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. Data is aggregated into 5-degree by 5-degree spatial grid cells for each month, preserving multivariate distributional features from the original swath retrievals. The product is generated by the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC).
Use Cases
- Analyze monthly trends in air temperature profiles across 11 atmospheric levels for climate change studies.
- Model global water vapor distribution and variability using the monthly aggregated vapor profile data.
- Study cloud fraction and its vertical distribution for climate feedback analysis within each 5x5 degree grid cell.
- Validate reanalysis products or general circulation models using the multivariate statistical summaries of atmospheric state.
Strengths
- Data preserves multivariate distributional features from the original Level-2 retrievals, offering more than simple means.
- Provides three key geophysical parameter groups: temperature profiles, water vapor profiles, and cloud fraction.
- Spatial aggregation to a 5x5 degree grid provides a compressed, manageable dataset for global analysis.
Limitations
- Spatial resolution is coarse (5x5 degrees), limiting analysis of regional or local atmospheric phenomena.
- Derived from a single instrument (AIRS-only), lacking the synergistic microwave data from the full AIRS/AMSU/HSB suite for all-weather retrieval.
- Specific row count, temporal coverage, and update recency are unknown from the provided information.
Provenance
- Source
- NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC).
- Collection Method
- Quantization products derived from Level-2 standard retrieval swath data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on the EOS Aqua satellite.
- Time Range
- null
- Freshness
- Monthly product; specific last update date is unknown.
- Geography
- Global coverage, aggregated to a 5-degree by 5-degree latitude/longitude grid.