Nimbus-5 Microwave Spectrometer Atmospheric Measurements from 1972-1973
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Description
NEMS/Nimbus-5 Level 2 Output Data contains surface reflectivity, water vapor, liquid water, layer thickness, temperature at standard pressure levels, surface brightness temperature, and surface type information. The dataset includes input antenna and brightness temperatures at five microwave channels (22.235, 31.4, 53.65, 54.9, and 58.8 GHz). Principal investigator David H. Staelin from MIT led the experiment, which collected data from December 17, 1972, to October 31, 1973.
Use Cases
Analyze historical water vapor and liquid water column data to study atmospheric moisture trends.
Correlate surface brightness temperature and surface type information for land surface studies.
Validate climate models using temperature profiles at standard pressure levels from the early 1970s.
Study the spatial distribution of atmospheric parameters using the instrument's 180-km diameter nadir footprint.
Strengths
Provides data from five specific microwave channels (22.235, 31.4, 53.65, 54.9, 58.8 GHz) for atmospheric profiling.
Covers a defined time period from December 17, 1972, to October 31, 1973.
Includes multiple derived geophysical parameters like surface reflectivity, water vapor, and layer thickness.
Limitations
Data is temporally limited to a single year (1972-1973) and is historically stale.
The spatial resolution is coarse, with a nadir footprint of 180 km in diameter.
Data is stored in a legacy binary format, which may require specialized tools for access and interpretation.
Provenance
Source
NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC).
Collection Method
Collected by the Nimbus-5 or Nimbus-E Microwave Spectrometer (NEMS) instrument viewing the nadir.
Time Range
1972-12-17 to 1973-10-31
Freshness
Data collection ended on 1973-10-31; it is a historical archive with no ongoing updates.
Geography
Global coverage determined by the Nimbus-5 satellite's orbit and the instrument's 180-km nadir footprint.
Data for about five days is stored in a single binary data file, requiring knowledge of the specific format for reading. License terms are not specified in the provided input.