AIRS CLIMCAPS: Atmospheric State Profiles from Aqua Satellite

CLIMCAPS algorithm retrieves full atmospheric state profiles from the AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. The dataset includes 100-level temperature profiles from 1100 mb to 0.1 mb, moisture profiles up to 300 mb, and trace gas concentrations for carbon monoxide, methane, and ozone at a 50 km horizontal resolution. It provides surface properties, cloud characteristics, and column densities for gases like sulfur dioxide and nitric acid, characterizing the atmospheric column for climate and air quality studies.

Use Cases

• Tracking global carbon monoxide pollution plumes based on retrieved column density profiles.
• Validating climate model simulations of upper-air temperature using the 100-level vertical profile.
• Analyzing cloud radiative effects using infrared effective cloud top characteristics.
• Studying stratosphere-troposphere exchange using ozone and water vapor profiles.
• Monitoring surface skin temperature and emissivity for land surface process studies.

Strengths

• Provides a vertically detailed atmospheric state with temperature reported at 100 pressure levels.
• Cross-platform presence on NASA and U.S. government portals indicates established importance and curation.
• Includes a documented correction procedure for a known bias in the 'co_mmr_midtrop' variable.

Limitations

• Critical metadata like row count, column names, and exact file size are unknown across all sources.
• Contains a significant, documented bias in the derived carbon monoxide mass mixing ratio product that requires user correction.
• Spatial resolution of 50 km may be too coarse for localized air quality or convective-scale studies.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Retrieved via the CLIMCAPS Optimal Estimation algorithm applied to AIRS (Atmospheric Infrared Sounder) spectrometer data from the EOS Aqua satellite.

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-04-09 according to datagov.

Geography

Global coverage from polar-orbiting satellite.