SCRN4L1RAD: Nimbus-4 Satellite Atmospheric Radiance Data

SCRN4L1RAD contains calibrated infrared radiance measurements from the Nimbus-4 satellite's Selective Chopper Radiometer. The data, available from July 1970 to February 1973, provides declouded radiances across six spectral channels with a 25 km ground resolution, used to derive atmospheric temperature profiles. It offers a near-global spatial coverage from -80 to +80 degrees latitude, stored in its original proprietary binary format.

Use Cases

• Analyzing historical atmospheric temperature profiles based on six infrared radiance channels.
• Studying long-term climate trends using a near-global dataset from 1970-1973.
• Validating atmospheric retrieval algorithms with declouded radiance measurements.
• Researching instrument performance and data degradation over time, referencing the documented channel failures.

Strengths

• Provides a multi-year historical record from July 1970 to February 1973.
• Offers spatially extensive coverage across near-global latitudes (-80 to +80 degrees).
• Includes detailed metadata on instrument performance and known data quality issues.

Limitations

• Data quality degraded over time with channel 1 failing in June 1970 and channels 3-4 becoming noisy in April 1972.
• Metadata completeness is medium; specific column names and dataset size are not provided.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates exist across platforms (1973-02-20 vs. 2026-04-10).

Provenance

Source

GES DISC (NASA), originally from NSSDC with identifier ESAD-00096.

Collection Method

Recovered from original 9-track tapes and stored as daily files in proprietary binary format.

Time Range

1970-07-27 to 1973-02-20

Freshness

2026-04-10 19:46:48.130431

Geography

Near-global, latitude -80 to +80 degrees.