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Full catalog/AIRABRAD_NRT
AIRABRAD_NRT·v005·dataset

Raw microwave brightness readings (Aqua AMSU, near real-time)

AIRS/Aqua L1B Near Real Time (NRT) AMSU (A1/A2) geolocated and calibrated brightness temperatures V005 (AIRABRAD_NRT) at GES DISC
land NASA GES_DISC Level 1B active
In plain English

What it measures. Raw, calibrated microwave brightness readings — how much microwave energy the atmosphere gives off, pinpointed to locations on the ground.

How it's made. Comes straight from the AMSU microwave instrument paired with AIRS on NASA's Aqua satellite; this near-real-time version is produced fast (within about three hours) using predicted rather than final orbit data, trading some accuracy for speed.

How & where you'd use it. A low-level input mostly used to feed weather forecasts and temperature retrievals quickly, and to help correct cloud effects in companion infrared data, rather than used directly by the public.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › MICROWAVE › BRIGHTNESS TEMPERATURE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2015-12-15 → ongoing
  • Measured byAqua (AMSU-A)
  • Processing levelLevel 1B
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • StatusACTIVE

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 AMSU-A Level 1B Near Real Time (NRT) product (AIRABRAD_NRT_005) differs from the routine product (AIRABRAD_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 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 AMSU-A instrument is co-aligned with AIRS so that successive blocks of 3 x 3 AIRS footprints are contained within one AMSU-A footprint. AMSU-A is primarily a temperature sounder that provides atmospheric information in the presence of clouds, which can be used to correct the AIRS infrared measurements for the effects of clouds. This is possible because non-precipitating clouds are for the most part transparent to microwave radiation, in contrast to visible and infrared radiation which are strongly scattered and absorbed by clouds. AMSU-A1 has 13 channels from 50 - 90 GHz and AMSU-A2 has 2 channels from 23 - 32 GHz. The AIRABRAD_NRT_005 products are stored in files (often referred to as "granules") that contain 6 minutes of data, 30 footprints across track by 45 lines along track.

Get the data

airabrad_nrt_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AIRABRAD_NRT",
    version="005",
    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 GES_DISC
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.