AIRS/Aqua L1B Visible/Near Infrared (VIS/NIR) geolocated and calibrated radiances V005 (AIRVBRAD) at GES DISC

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) is a grating spectrometer (R = 1200) 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 (HSB), AIRS constitutes an innovative atmospheric sounding group of visible, infrared, and microwave sensors. The VIS/NIR level 1B data set contains visible and near-infrared calibrated and geolocated radiances in W/m^2/micron/steradian. This data set includes 4 channels in the 0.4 to 1.0 um region of the spectrum. Each day of AIRS data are divided into 240 granules each of 6 minute duration. However, the VIS/NIR granules are only produced in the daytime so there will always be fewer VIS/NIR granules. The primary purpose of the VIS/NIR channels is the detection and flagging of significant inhomogeneities in the infrared field-of-view,which may adversely impact the quality of the temperature and moisture soundings. Therefore the VIS/NIR radiance product has a higher spatial resolution than the Infrared radiance product. Each VIS/NIR scan has 9 alongtrack footprints and 720 across track footprints. For ease in comparing with the infrared product which has 135 along track footprints and 90 across track footprints, the VIS/NIR product has additional dimensions to account for the 9 additional alongtrack and 8 additional across track footprints.