Description
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 quantization products (QP) are distributional summaries derived from the Level-2 standard retrieval
products (of swath type) to provide a more comprehensive set of statistical summaries than the traditional means and standard deviation.
The QP products combine the Level 2 standard data parameters over grid
cells of 5 x 5 deg spatial extent for temporal periods of five days from -180.0 to +180.0 deg longitude and from -90.0 to +90.0 deg latitude.
For each grid map of 4-byte floating-point mean values there is a corresponding 4-byte floating-point map of standard deviation and a 2-byte integer grid map of counts. The counts map provides the user with the number of points per bin that were included in the mean and can be used to generate custom multi-day maps from the daily gridded products. The thermodynamic parameters are: Skin Temperature (land and sea surface), Air Temperature at the surface, Profiles of Air Temperature and Water Vapor, Tropopause Characteristics, Column Precipitable Water, Cloud Amount/Frequency, Cloud Height, Cloud Top Pressure, Cloud Top Temperature, Reflectance, Emissivity, Surface Pressure, Cloud Vertical Distribution. The trace gases parameters are: Total Amounts and Vertical Profiles of Carbon Monoxide, Methane, and Ozone. The actual names of the variables in the data files should be inferred from the Processing File Description document.
Resources
| Name | Format | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Download this dataset through a directory map | HTML | Access the data via HTTP. | Open resource |
| Use OPeNDAP to access the dataset's data | HTML | Access the data via the OPeNDAP protocol. | Open resource |
| The dataset's project home page | HTML | AIRS home page at NASA/JPL. General information on the AIRS instrument, algorithms, and other AIRS-related activities can be found. | Open resource |
| This dataset's landing page | HTML | Access the dataset landing page from the GES DISC website. | Open resource |
| View information related to this dataset | HTML | AIRS Documentation Page | Open resource |
| Get a related visualization | GIF | AIRX3QP5_006.gif | Open resource |
| View this dataset's read me document | README Document | Open resource | |
| View documentation related to this dataset | AIRS Version 6 Processing Files Description Document. | Open resource | |
| Google Scholar search results | HTML | Search results for publications that cite this dataset by its DOI. | Open resource |
| Download this dataset through Earthdata Search | HTML | Use the Earthdata Search to find and retrieve data sets across multiple data centers. | Open resource |