AQUA AIRS CLIMCAPS: Daily Atmospheric Profiles and Trace Gas Grids

CLIMCAPS algorithm retrievals from the AIRS and AMSU instruments on NASA's Aqua satellite provide a full atmospheric state characterization. Temperature profiles are reported at 100 vertical levels between 1100 mb and 0.1 mb, with a horizontal resolution of 50 km. The dataset includes profiles of water vapor, ozone, carbon monoxide, methane, and carbon dioxide, alongside surface and cloud properties.

Use Cases

• Monitoring global tropospheric carbon monoxide levels using retrieved column density values ('mol_lay/co_mol_lay').
• Analyzing vertical temperature and moisture profiles for weather and climate model validation.
• Studying cloud radiative effects using infrared effective cloud top characteristics.
• Tracking methane and ozone distributions for atmospheric chemistry research.

Strengths

• Provides high vertical resolution with temperature reported at 100 atmospheric levels.
• Uses a coupled infrared and microwave sensor system (AIRS/AMSU) for robust atmospheric sounding.
• Dataset is maintained by NASA and features a documented quality control warning for a specific variable.

Limitations

• A significant, documented bias exists in the 'co_mmr_midtrop' variable due to an incorrect molecular weight conversion.
• Key metadata such as row count, specific column names, and precise temporal coverage are unavailable across all sources.
• The 'last updated' date of 2026-04-09 appears to be a future date, indicating potential metadata errors.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Sounder SIPS at JPL.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing data from the AIRS and AMSU instruments on the EOS Aqua platform, processed with the CLIMCAPS Optimal Estimation algorithm.

Freshness

Last updated date is listed as 2026-04-09, which is a future date and may be erroneous.

Geography

Global coverage from a polar-orbiting satellite.