ML3MBGPH: Aura Satellite Monthly Geopotential Height Data on Assorted Grids

August 2005 to present near-global geopotential height data from the NASA Aura satellite's Microwave Limb Sounder. The data is binned monthly on various vertical grids with a spatial resolution of 4 degrees latitude by 5 degrees longitude. It is provided by NASA's Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) in netCDF4 format.

Use Cases

• Modeling atmospheric pressure and circulation patterns based on monthly binned geopotential height averages.
• Analyzing long-term climate variability based on near-global (-82 to +82 degrees latitude) spatial coverage from 2005 onward.
• Studying vertical atmospheric structure based on data across the recommended pressure range from 261 to 0.001 hPa.
• Comparing zonal mean and vortex average atmospheric conditions based on the six group objects (e.g., lat vs pressure zonal mean) in each file.

Strengths

• Long temporal coverage from August 2005 to the present, enabling trend analysis.
• Near-global spatial coverage from -82 to +82 degrees latitude.
• Data is structured in six group objects per file, providing averages, minima, maxima, standard deviations, and RMS values.
• 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 (NASA)

Collection Method

Derived from radiances measured by the 118 and 240 GHz radiometers on the EOS Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS).

Time Range

August 2005 to present

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 00:01:46.350998; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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