TES/Aura L3: Daily Gridded Atmospheric Temperature and Gas Profiles

Data from the completed Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) instrument aboard NASA's Aura satellite, launched July 15, 2004. This Level 3 product provides daily gridded atmospheric temperature and volume mixing ratios for various species, interpolated onto a global 2° latitude by 4° longitude grid at standard pressure levels. It represents data from single Global Survey orbits, each covering approximately 26 hours, and is stored in HDF-EOS format with separate files per species.

Use Cases

• Analyzing global temperature profiles at specific pressure levels based on the gridded daily data.
• Tracking the distribution and concentration of atmospheric gases using the volume mixing ratio (VMR) data.
• Comparing atmospheric observations from different instrument modes (limb vs. nadir) contained within the product files.
• Studying tropospheric chemistry and dynamics over the mission's temporal coverage using the interpolated 3-D representations.

Strengths

• Provides a spatially consistent 3-D global grid (2°x4°) for direct comparison of atmospheric states.
• Data collection is complete for the entire TES mission aboard the Aura satellite, offering a defined temporal record.
• Contains data from two distinct observation geometries (limb and nadir), allowing for different atmospheric sampling strategies.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as specific column names, row counts, and file sizes are not provided in the available sources.
• The 'last updated' metadata field shows a conflict between 2018 and a future date (2026), casting doubt on provenance tracking.
• The spatial resolution (2°x4°) is relatively coarse for regional-scale atmospheric studies.

Provenance

Source

NASA Aura satellite, Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) instrument, processed by the LARC_CLOUD organization.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing via infrared spectrometry, with Level 2 profiles interpolated onto a uniform global grid by the Science Data Processing L3 subsystem.

Time Range

From the Aura launch date (July 15, 2004) through the completion of TES data collection.

Freshness

2026-04-09 20:25:03.020497 (noted conflict with an earlier 2018 date)

Geography

Global coverage.