TROPICS: Satellite Microwave Sounder Data for Tropical Storms

TROPICS06 L1A data originates from a Pathfinder satellite, a precursor to a six-satellite constellation designed for high-temporal-resolution storm observations. Each data granule contains approximately 2880 scans and 81 spots, representing a full orbit of passive microwave spectrometer measurements. The TROPICS Millimeter-wave Sounder (TMS) provides temperature profiles near 118.75 GHz, water vapor profiles near 183 GHz, and channels sensitive to precipitation and cloud ice.

Use Cases

• Analyzing 3D temperature and humidity profiles in tropical cyclones using seven oxygen-line and three water-vapor-line channels.
• Investigating precipitation horizontal structure by combining 90 GHz imagery with higher-resolution water vapor channels.
• Studying cloud ice particle distribution using the 205 GHz channel sensitive to cloud-sized ice.
• Tracking storm evolution with nearly all-weather observations from a planned six-satellite constellation.
• Validating and improving numerical weather prediction models for tropical systems with geolocated antenna temperature data.

Strengths

• Data is from a dedicated satellite constellation mission (TROPICS) with six identical spacecraft, indicating a designed, systematic observation program.
• Each netCDF file contains a defined granule structure with approximately 2880 scans and 81 spots per orbit, providing a consistent data volume.
• The spectrometer uses 12 specific microwave channels targeting oxygen, water vapor, precipitation, and cloud ice, enabling multi-parameter atmospheric profiling.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as column names, dataset size, row count, license, and author are consistently listed as unknown or 'None' across all platforms.
• The 'last updated' date of 2026-03-13 appears to be a future date, casting doubt on the accuracy of this metadata field.
• Descriptions are identical across platforms but lack concrete details on data access, processing levels, or validation.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Collected by the TROPICS Pathfinder satellite's TROPICS Millimeter-wave Sounder (TMS), a passive microwave spectrometer on a sun-synchronous orbital plane.

Freshness

2026-03-13 20:33:56.267231

Geography

Global, with a mission focus on tropical cyclone regions.