AIRS Aqua Monthly Atmospheric Retrievals With HSB Instrument Data

Global atmospheric data from the AIRS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite, combined with the Humidity Sounder for Brazil (HSB). This Level 3 monthly product provides gridded means, standard deviations, and counts for thermodynamic parameters and trace gases across a 1x1 degree global grid. The dataset is produced by NASA's Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) and covers a specific five-month period.

Use Cases

• Analyzing global skin temperature and surface air temperature patterns from the 'Skin Temperature' and 'Air Temperature at the surface' parameters.
• Studying vertical profiles of water vapor and trace gases like carbon monoxide, methane, and ozone.
• Investigating cloud properties, including cloud amount/frequency, height, top pressure, and vertical distribution.
• Calculating column precipitable water and tropopause characteristics for atmospheric moisture and structure studies.
• Generating custom multi-day maps using the provided count grids per 1x1 degree bin.

Strengths

• Provides standard deviation and input count grids alongside mean values for each 1x1 degree cell, enabling statistical analysis.
• Combines visible, infrared, and microwave sensor data from AIRS, AMSU, and the HSB for a multi-instrument retrieval.
• Contains a detailed set of over 15 thermodynamic and trace gas parameters, including vertical profiles.

Limitations

• Temporal coverage is limited to only five months (September 2002 through January 2003) due to the failure of the HSB instrument.
• Conflicting last update dates exist between sources (2003-03-01 on NASA Earthdata and 2026-03-13 on Data.gov).
• Specific column names and dataset size (row count, file size) are not provided in the available metadata.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Retrievals from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU), and Humidity Sounder for Brazil (HSB) instruments on the EOS Aqua satellite, processed into Level 3 monthly gridded products.

Time Range

September 2002 to January 2003

Freshness

2026-03-13 18:33:23.509210

Geography

Global, binned into 1x1 degree cells from -180.0 to +180.0 degrees longitude and -90.0 to +90.0 degrees latitude.