GPM AMSU-B: Common Calibrated Microwave Brightness Temperatures from NOAA-15

Version 07 recalibrates brightness temperatures from the AMSU-B instrument on NOAA-15 to a common basis for consistent precipitation analysis. The data structure includes scan time, latitude, longitude, and intercalibrated brightness temperature across 5 specific microwave channels. NASA provides this Level 1C product, with the last metadata update recorded on 2026-03 13.

Use Cases

• Develop precipitation retrieval algorithms based on intercalibrated brightness temperatures.
• Study atmospheric water vapor profiles using data from the 183.31 GHz channels.
• Perform cross-satellite instrument consistency analysis using the common calibration basis.
• Analyze geophysical swath data for weather forecasting models based on scan time and location.

Strengths

• Data is calibrated to a common basis to ensure consistency for derived precipitation products.
• Swath contains observations sampled 90 times along a scan with a period of 2.667 seconds.
• Includes five specific microwave channels (e.g., 89.0, 150.0, and three at 183.31 GHz).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and total data volume are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Passive microwave radiometer observations from the AMSU-B instrument on the NOAA-15 satellite.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 02:29:53.951430; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global swath coverage from satellite orbit.