NASA AMSR-2 Project: Unified Global Ocean, Land, and Sea Ice Data

A unified data record from the AMSR-E and AMSR2 satellite instruments, intercalibrated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The dataset reports integrated water vapor, cloud liquid water, sea surface wind speeds, surface precipitation, soil moisture, and sea ice concentrations. Data are provided in gridded formats, including the NSIDC EASE-Grid Global projection for land products.

Use Cases

• Modeling ocean-atmosphere heat and moisture exchange based on integrated water vapor and sea surface wind speed data.
• Monitoring polar climate change based on daily sea ice concentration and snow depth over sea ice.
• Analyzing land surface hydrology and drought based on 25 km resolution surface soil moisture estimates.
• Studying global precipitation patterns based on instantaneous surface precipitation rates and types.

Strengths

• Data is intercalibrated to create a unified record from two satellite sensors (AMSR-E and AMSR2).
• Covers multiple Earth system components: ocean, atmosphere, land, and cryosphere.
• Includes ancillary files for product history, quality assessment, and metadata.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and total dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NASA.

Collection Method

Derived from brightness temperature observations from the AMSR-E and AMSR2 satellite instruments, resampled and intercalibrated.

Time Range

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Freshness

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Geography

Global, with specific polar stereographic grids for sea ice data.