Gridded AIRS nadir-view spectra with quality control

Download Data: A sample of this data set for January 2013 is available here (link). This data set is ~16G per year. We can provide the entire data set (2002 to present) upon request for free. If you are interested in this data set, please email me.

Data format: The data is matlab data format. Each file contains results from 16-day average of AIRS nadir-view observations.The standard deviaiton as well as number of observations used for the average are also included in the file. The spatial resolution is 2.5-degree longitude by 2-degree latitude. In each file, the ascending and descending observations are processed seperately. The prefix of “asc_” denotes the ascendign node and “des_” the descending node. 2081 AIRS channels are saved in the file. The channel information can be found hereFor any grid box with no values, the avg value is filled with zero.

Note: If you want simple monthly-mean average, the best practice is to average the ascending and descending results in equal weight, i.e., (dayavg+ngtavg)/2. This can minimize any possible impact due to disparity in diurnal samplingsbetween ascending and descending nodes.

Brief Description: This data set is based on Huang and Yung (2005) and averages AIRS L1B nadir-view calibrated radiances onto 2 degree by 2.5 degree regular grids over each 16-day period (the repeating cycle of Aqua satellite). Given the nature of the AIRS L1B radiances, great emphasis has been put to ensure the detecting and filtering bad signals when the channels broke bad. My group has been archiving and processing this data set in nearly real time.

Acknowledgements: The work is supported by NASA Earth Sciences Program as well as CERES Science Team in NASA Langley.

Should you have any questions, please email me.

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