Microwave brightness used to map ice and water (Aqua AMSR-E)
What it measures. Records natural microwave energy coming up from Earth across six channels, expressed as brightness temperature (how warm a surface looks to the sensor at each frequency), in half-orbit swaths.
How it's made. Comes from the AMSR-E instrument on the Aqua satellite, resampled to consistent spatial resolutions and packaged with location and quality information (Level 2A).
How & where you'd use it. A building-block input used to map sea ice, snow, soil moisture, and open water; most people use those derived products rather than the raw brightness temperatures.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2002-06-01 → 2011-10-04
- Measured byAqua (AMSR-E)
- Processing levelLevel 2A
- Spatial extent-180, -89.24, 180, 89.24
- FormatsHDF-EOS2
- StatusCOMPLETE
What you can do with it
- Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
- Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
- Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description
The AMSR-E Level-2A product (AE_L2A) contains daily 50 minute half-orbit swath brightness temperatures for six channels ranging from 6.9 GHz through 89 GHz. Data are resampled to spatial resolutions ranging from 5.4 km to 56 km. Each file is packaged with geolocation and quality information as well as ancillary data.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="AE_L2A",
version="4",
bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9), # your area (W,S,E,N)
temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"), # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results) # stream straight from NSIDC_CPRDBrowsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package. Official links
- Search and order NASA Earth Science data using spatial and temporal filters. Reformatting, reprojecting, and subsetting options are available for some data sets. GET DATA
- Quickly download a few files using a web browser, or access data through a command-line utility such as WGET. GET DATA
- Search data by spatial and/or temporal ranges or file name. Choose from various download options, including a Python script. GET DATA
- A Python library to search and access NASA Earth science data with just a few lines of code GET DATA
- Find more data access options and help resources. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- AMSR-E/Aqua L2A Global Swath Spatially-Resampled Brightness Temperatures, Version 4 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- AMSR-E/Aqua Data Quality and Data Uncertainty VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- Aqua AMSR-E Level 1 Product Format Description Document VIEW RELATED INFORMATION