AMSR-E/Aqua: Daily Gridded Microwave Brightness Temperatures

Global passive microwave measurements from the AMSR-E instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. The dataset provides brightness temperature data interpolated to gridded projections using an Inverse Distance Squared method, sourced from Level 2A swath data. Data are available in three EASE-Grid projections at 25 km resolution and a global cylindrical projection at 0.25-degree resolution.

Use Cases

• Monitoring sea ice concentration and extent based on brightness temperature differences across microwave frequencies.
• Estimating soil moisture and snow water equivalent for hydrological modeling using the 6.9 GHz and 10.7 GHz channels.
• Retrieving atmospheric water vapor and cloud liquid water content for weather and climate studies using the 23.8 GHz and 36.5 GHz channels.
• Analyzing global land surface temperature trends and anomalies from the spatially resampled brightness temperature grids.

Strengths

• Provides data at six specific microwave frequencies (6.9, 10.7, 18.7, 23.8, 36.5, and 89.0 GHz), enabling multi-parameter retrievals.
• Offers data in multiple standard geospatial projections (EASE-Grid north/south/global and 0.25-degree lat/lon), facilitating integration with other datasets.
• Cross-platform presence on NASA Earthdata and Data.gov signals its importance and curation within the Earth science community.

Limitations

• Metadata conflict: last updated date differs significantly between sources (2011 on NASA Earthdata vs. 2026 on Data.gov), casting doubt on data freshness.
• Column names and exact data structure are unknown from the provided sources, limiting understanding of the internal schema.
• License is ambiguously specified as 'other-license-specified' without further details, complicating reuse clarity.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), processed by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

Collection Method

Data from the AMSR-E instrument on the Aqua satellite are interpolated from swath to grid using an Inverse Distance Squared (ID2) method.

Freshness

2026-03-13 15:31:59.379288

Geography

Global