PREFIRE: Polar Radiant Energy Satellite Calibrated Radiance

PREFIRE Level 1A data provides calibrated spectral radiance measurements from a push broom spectrometer aboard the PREFIRE-SAT1 CubeSat. It captures mid- and far-infrared radiation across 63 channels from approximately 5 to 53 µm, focusing on polar regions to fill gaps in the global energy budget. This ungeolocated radiance data serves as the input for generating geolocated Level 1B products.

Use Cases

• Calibrating geolocated radiance products based on the internal blackbody and space-look calibration process.
• Assimilating far-infrared emission data into global circulation models to improve climate predictions.
• Analyzing spectral signatures in the 5-53 µm range for atmospheric radiation research.
• Studying temporal changes in polar emissions with the dataset's 0.707-second resolution time series.

Strengths

• Provides novel large-scale measurements in the under-sampled far-infrared spectrum (5-53 µm).
• Offers high temporal resolution data collected every 0.707 seconds.
• Cross-platform presence on NASA Earthdata and Data.gov signals its importance and curation.

Limitations

• Metadata completeness is low: column names, row counts, and exact size are unknown across all sources.
• Sources conflict on the data retrieval start date ('May TBD, 2024' vs. 'July 24, 2024').
• The data is not geolocated, limiting its utility for direct scientific study without further processing.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing; digital number counts converted to radiance via internal calibration.

Time Range

Ongoing collection starting in 2024.

Freshness

Last updated metadata on 2026-04-09 according to two sources.

Geography

Global, with the greatest concentration of data in the polar regions.