TES/Aura L2 H2O Limb: Atmospheric Water Vapor Profiles with Error Estimates

Atmospheric vertical profile estimates for water vapor (H2O) and associated errors from the TES instrument on NASA's Aura satellite. The data includes retrieved surface temperature, cloud optical depth, column estimates, quality flags, averaging kernels, and a priori constraint vectors. It was last updated by the LARC_CLOUD organization on 2006-05-20.

Use Cases

• Validate and improve atmospheric chemistry models based on vertical water vapor profiles.
• Assess uncertainty in satellite retrievals based on the provided error covariance matrices.
• Study cloud-aerosol interactions based on retrieved cloud effective optical depth.
• Perform data assimilation for weather forecasting based on the profile estimates and averaging kernels.

Strengths

• Data includes formal error estimates, including covariance matrices, for uncertainty quantification.
• Provides ancillary data like averaging kernels and a priori constraints for advanced analysis.
• Originates from the NASA Aura satellite's TES instrument, a recognized source for atmospheric composition.

Limitations

• Last updated 2006-05-20 05:50:21.532000; freshness should be verified.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

NASA Aura satellite, TES instrument, processed by LARC_CLOUD.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing limb observations.

Time Range

Coverage period is not specified in the provided metadata.

Freshness

Last updated 2006-05-20 05:50:21.532000

Geography

Global coverage from satellite orbit.