SAMSN7L1RAD_CDROM: Nimbus-7 Stratospheric and Mesospheric Sounder Radiance Data

From 22 October 1978 to 16 April 1984, this dataset contains gridded Level 1 radiance and temperature profile data from the Nimbus-7 SAMS instrument. It provides daily radiances on a 2.5° latitude by 10° longitude grid and temperature profiles at specific pressure levels, designed to derive concentrations of gases like CO2, H2O, CO, NO, N2O, and CH4. The data is stored across 53 CD-ROMs in ASCII files of hexadecimal characters, originally created by Oxford University's AOPP group.

Use Cases

• Analyzing historical stratospheric temperature profiles from the gridded data on pressure levels from 100 to 0.003 hPa.
• Deriving trace gas concentrations for climate modeling using radiance measurements at specific infrared wavelength bands (e.g., 15, 25-100, 4-5, 7.7 microns).
• Studying the vertical structure of the atmosphere with data having a reported horizontal resolution of 100 km and vertical resolution of 10 km at the limb.
• Calibrating or validating newer satellite instruments using the provided pre-launch calibration and a-priori temperature profile data.

Strengths

• Covers a multi-year time range from 1978 to 1984, providing a snapshot of the upper atmosphere from a specific historical period.
• Contains multiple data products including raw radiances, gridded temperatures, calibration, and housekeeping files across 53 CD-ROMs.
• Data is associated with a specific scientific mission (Nimbus-7 SAMS) and principal investigators (Prof. John T. Houghton, Dr. Fredric W. Taylor) are named.

Limitations

• Metadata completeness is low: column names, row counts, and dataset size are unknown across all platform entries.
• There is a conflict in the 'last updated' metadata, with one source showing a future date (2026-04-09) and another showing the end of the data collection period (1984-04-16).
• The data format (ASCII files of hexadecimal characters with DEC byte-ordering) may require specialized knowledge or tools for modern interpretation and processing.

Provenance

Source

Oxford University's Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics (AOPP) group, archived by NASA GES DISC.

Collection Method

Collected by the Nimbus-7 Stratospheric and Mesospheric Sounder (SAMS) instrument.

Time Range

1978-10-22 to 1984-04-16

Freshness

1984-04-16 23:59:59.999000

Geography

Global, gridded to 2.5° latitude by 10° longitude.