ISCCP TOVS: Daily Global Atmospheric Temperature, Humidity, and Ozone Profiles

ISCCP_TOVS_NAT_1 is the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project TIROS Operational Vertical Sounder data set in Native Data Format. It provides a daily, global description of ozone, temperature, and humidity distributions derived from NOAA polar-orbiting satellite measurements. The data is gridded globally with a cell area equivalent to 2.5 degrees latitude/longitude at the equator.

Use Cases

• Modeling global cloud radiative effects based on inferred cloud distributions
• Analyzing diurnal and seasonal variations in atmospheric temperature profiles
• Studying global ozone column abundance distributions
• Investigating the relationship between sea ice/snow proximity and atmospheric conditions
• Validating climate models using satellite-derived temperature and humidity data

Strengths

• Data collection is described as complete
• Gridded on a global equal-area grid with a 2.5-degree equatorial cell size
• Composed of three structured file types: CLIM MONTHLY, TOVS MONTHLY, and TOVS DAILY

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Data processed by NOAA from measurements by HIRS/2, SSU, and MSU instruments on NOAA Operational Polar Orbiting Satellites.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 01:14:58.420496; freshness should be verified

Geography

Global