TROPICS03: Atmospheric Profiles for Tropical Cyclone Analysis

The TROPICS03 satellite provides Level 2B geophysical retrievals of atmospheric vertical temperature and moisture profiles. Each data granule contains approximately 2880 scans and 81 spots, representing an orbit's worth of observations. The mission uses a constellation of small satellites to deliver high temporal resolution, nearly all-weather three-dimensional data on temperature, humidity, cloud ice, and precipitation structure.

Use Cases

• Analyzing storm intensity based on high-temporal-resolution temperature and humidity observations.
• Modeling precipitation structure using imagery from the 90 GHz channel combined with water vapor data.
• Studying cloud ice particle distribution using measurements from the 205 GHz channel.
• Investigating three-dimensional atmospheric structure from vertical temperature (kelvins) and moisture (g/kg) retrievals.
• Calculating total precipitable water (mm) at the finer G-band spatial resolution.

Strengths

• Data is from a validated Stage-1 release, indicating a quality-controlled product.
• Each granule provides a spatially dense observation set with approximately 2880 scans and 81 spots.
• The constellation design enables high temporal resolution observations of rapidly evolving tropical systems.

Limitations

• Column names and detailed schema are unknown, limiting precise understanding of data structure.
• Specific file size and row counts are not provided across platforms.
• License information is inconsistently reported as 'other-license-specified' or null.

Provenance

Source

TROPICS03 satellite, part of the NASA TROPICS mission constellation.

Collection Method

Passive microwave spectrometer measurements from the TROPICS Millimeter-wave Sounder (TMS).

Freshness

2026-04-09 21:20:42.577850

Geography

Global, with focus on tropical regions where cyclones occur.