ML3DBRHI: Daily Global Relative Humidity with Respect to Ice from Aura Satellite

MLS/Aura Level 3 daily binned data provides relative humidity with respect to ice (RHI) derived from 118 and 190 GHz radiometer measurements. The dataset offers near-global coverage from -82 to +82 degrees latitude at a 4°x5° spatial resolution and a vertical range from 316 to 0.0215 hPa. Data files are archived in netCDF4 format by NASA and contain six group objects with statistical data fields.

Use Cases

• Modeling stratospheric water vapor transport based on daily binned, near-global humidity data.
• Analyzing vertical humidity profiles based on data spanning from 316 to 0.0215 hPa pressure levels.
• Studying zonal mean and vortex-average atmospheric conditions based on the six provided data group objects.
• Validating climate model outputs against satellite-derived relative humidity with respect to ice (RHI) observations.

Strengths

• Near-global spatial coverage from -82 to +82 degrees latitude.
• Vertical resolution between 3 and 6 km across a recommended range of 316 to 0.0215 hPa.
• Data files contain six distinct group objects with statistical measures (average, min, max, std dev, rms).
• Archived in netCDF4 format, which is compatible with standard HDF5 readers and tools.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Derived from radiances measured by the 118 and 190 GHz radiometers on the EOS Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS).

Time Range

Daily binned data; specific temporal coverage is not provided in the input.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 00:04:23.718740; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Near-global (-82 to +82 degrees latitude).