AMSR2: Daily Polar Brightness Temperatures at 6.25 km

Near real-time (NRT) products from the AMSR2 instrument are generated within 3 hours of observation, providing rapid data for monitoring polar conditions. This Level-3 gridded dataset contains daily 89.0 GHz brightness temperatures mapped to a 6.25 km polar stereographic grid, serving as an intermediate product for generating sea ice concentration maps. The data are produced by NASA's LANCE system using a modified version of the standard science algorithm, offering a trade-off between speed and calibration quality.

Use Cases

• Monitoring daily sea ice concentration changes based on 89 GHz brightness temperature measurements.
• Assimilating near real-time polar atmospheric data into weather forecasting models.
• Tracking short-term cryospheric events based on high-frequency (89 GHz) microwave observations.
• Calibrating or validating other satellite-derived geophysical products in polar regions.

Strengths

• Data latency is low, with products generated within 3 hours of the last observation in the file.
• Spatial resolution is precisely defined at 6.25 km on a polar stereographic grid.
• The processing algorithm is largely consistent with the standard science-quality product available from NSIDC.

Limitations

• The dataset is a near real-time product; for science applications, the better-calibrated standard product from NSIDC is recommended.
• Key metadata such as row count, file size, and specific column names are not provided in the available sources.
• The license is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' without explicit details.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) / Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)

Collection Method

Passive microwave measurements from the AMSR2 instrument on the GCOM-W1 satellite, processed by the Land Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE).

Freshness

Last updated date is listed as 2026-04-09, which appears to be a future date and may be a metadata error.

Geography

Global, with a focus on polar regions (data is mapped to a polar stereographic grid).