AIRS/Aqua L1B Near Real Time (NRT) Infrared (IR) quality assurance subset V005 (AIRIBQAP_NRT) at GES DISC

The AIRS Level 1B Near Real Time (NRT) product (AIRIBQAP_NRT_005) differs from the routine product (AIRIBQAP_005) in 2 ways to meet the three hour latency requirements of the Land Atmosphere NRT Capability Earth Observing System (LANCE): (1) The NRT granules are produced without previous or subsequent granules if those granules are not available within 5 minutes, (2) the predictive ephemeris/attitude data are used rather than the definitive ephemeris/attitude. The consequences of these differences are described in the AIRS Near Real Time (NRT) data products document. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) is a facility instrument aboard the second Earth Observing System (EOS) polar-orbiting platform, EOS Aqua. In combination with the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) and the Humidity Sounder for Brazil Humidity Sounder for Brazil (HSB), AIRS constitutes an innovative atmospheric sounding group of visible, infrared, and microwave sensors. AIRS data will be generated continuously. Global coverage will be obtained twice daily (day and night) on a 1:30pm sun synchronous orbit from a 705-km altitude. The AIRS IR Level 1B QA Subset contains Quality Assurance (QA) parameters that a user of may use to filter AIRS IR Level 1B radiance data to create a subset of analysis. QA parameters indicate quality of granule-per-channel, scan-per-channel, field of view, and channel and should be accessed before any data of analysis. It also contains "glintlat", "glintlon", and "sun_glint_distant" that users can use to check for possibility of solar glint contamination.