AQUA AIRS CLIMCAPS: Global Atmospheric Profiles and Trace Gas Grids

Daily Level 3 gridded data from the AIRS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite, processed with the CLIMCAPS algorithm. The dataset provides full atmospheric state profiles, including temperature, water vapor, ozone, carbon monoxide, methane, and other trace gases, at a horizontal resolution of 50 km and a vertical resolution of up to 100 pressure levels. It is intended for monitoring atmospheric composition, climate studies, and air quality research.

Use Cases

• Monitoring global tropospheric carbon monoxide levels for air quality and pollution transport studies.
• Assimilating temperature and water vapor profiles into numerical weather prediction models.
• Analyzing long-term trends in atmospheric methane and other greenhouse gases for climate change research.
• Studying cloud properties and their radiative effects using retrieved cloud top pressure and temperature.
• Validating chemical transport models with gridded, satellite-derived ozone and sulfur dioxide data.

Strengths

• Provides a multi-parameter atmospheric state from a single, well-established satellite instrument (AIRS on Aqua).
• Offers high vertical resolution for temperature (100 levels between 1100 mb and 0.1 mb).
• Includes a wide range of geophysical parameters, from surface properties to trace gas profiles.

Limitations

• Contains a documented significant bias in the 'co_mmr_midtrop' variable due to a molecular weight conversion error.
• Critical metadata such as row count, column names, and precise temporal coverage is missing from all source descriptions.
• The license is ambiguously specified as 'other-license-specified' without clear terms.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Retrievals from the AIRS grating spectrometer using the CLIMCAPS Optimal Estimation algorithm.

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-04-09 according to one platform entry.

Geography

Global, gridded to one degree latitude by one longitude.