TES/Aura L2 HDO Limb: Atmospheric Vertical Profiles with Error Estimates

TES/Aura L2 HDO Limb V006 provides atmospheric vertical profile estimates and associated errors from the Aura satellite. The dataset includes retrieved surface temperature, cloud effective optical depth, column estimates, quality flags, averaging kernels, and a priori constraint vectors. It was last updated by the LARC_CLOUD organization on 2018-01-31.

Use Cases

• Validate atmospheric chemistry models based on vertical profile estimates.
• Assess retrieval uncertainty for trace gases based on provided error covariance matrices.
• Study cloud-radiation interactions based on retrieved cloud effective optical depth.
• Perform data assimilation for climate forecasts based on averaging kernels and a priori constraints.

Strengths

• Includes associated error estimates, including diagonals and covariance matrices, which are critical for uncertainty quantification.
• Provides auxiliary data such as averaging kernels and a priori constraint vectors for advanced atmospheric retrievals.

Limitations

• Last updated 2018-01-31; 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.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing limb observations.

Time Range

Coverage corresponds to the Aura satellite mission lifetime.

Freshness

Last updated 2018-01-31 00:00:00.

Geography

Global coverage from satellite orbits.