PREFIRE: Polar Surface Emissivity Climatology from CubeSat Spectrometer

PREFIRE's dual CubeSats carry a 63-channel spectrometer measuring far-infrared radiation from 5 to 53 µm, a spectral range where most polar emissions occur but which has not been measured on a large scale. This dataset provides monthly, 1°x1° gridded climatologies of surface spectral emissivity and its standard deviation, sorted by surface type and derived from the PREFIRE-SAT1 instrument. Its primary purpose is to identify emissivity behaviors by surface type and to assimilate these measurements into climate models to improve predictions of future polar and global climates.

Use Cases

• Assimilating polar surface emissivity data into global circulation models to improve climate projections.
• Analyzing spectral emissivity behaviors differentiated by surface type (e.g., ice, snow, land).
• Studying diurnal variability in polar radiation by examining ascending- and descending-only satellite track subsets.
• Calculating the standard deviation of monthly-averaged emissivity to assess temporal variability across a 1° grid.
• Filling knowledge gaps in the far-infrared portion of the global energy budget, specifically for polar regions.

Strengths

• Provides data from 63 specific spectral channels covering the mid- to far-infrared (5-53 µm).
• Offers climatologies sorted by surface type, allowing for targeted analysis of different polar surfaces.
• Retains spatial detail from 8 distinct cross-track swaths, preserving instrument observation geometry.
• Dataset is part of a coordinated mission, with a sister collection (PREFIRE-SAT2) available for cross-validation or expanded coverage.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, and specific author are consistently missing or listed as 'unknown' across all platform entries.
• The dataset's temporal coverage is not explicitly stated, only that the averaging period is 'currently monthly'.
• The license is listed as 'other-license-specified' without further detail, requiring users to investigate terms.

Provenance

Source

NASA/LARC_CLOUD, from the PREFIRE Thermal Infrared Spectrometer (TIRS-PREFIRE) aboard the PREFIRE-SAT1 CubeSat.

Collection Method

Derived from Level 2 PREFIRE Surface Emissivity data, gridded and time-averaged into monthly climatologies.

Time Range

Monthly climatologies; specific start and end dates are not provided in the input.

Freshness

2026-04-09 23:10:26.307802

Geography

Global, with a specific focus on polar regions. Gridded to a 1°x1° spatial resolution.