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Full catalog/AIRH2CCF
AIRH2CCF·v7.0·dataset

Cloud-cleared infrared readings of the atmosphere (Aqua)

Aqua/AIRS L2 Cloud-Cleared Infrared Radiances (AIRS+AMSU+HSB) V7.0 at GES DISC
land NASA GES_DISC Level 2
In plain English

What it measures. Calibrated infrared readings of the atmosphere that have been mathematically 'cleared' of clouds — essentially what the sensor would have seen in each spot if the sky had been cloud-free.

How it's made. Produced by combining the AIRS infrared sounder with companion microwave instruments on the Aqua satellite; because one of those instruments only worked from late 2002 to early 2003, this dataset covers just those five months.

How & where you'd use it. A specialized, high-volume input mainly of interest to scientists retrieving temperature and humidity profiles, rather than to general users who typically use the finished standard products.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › INFRARED RADIANCE › CLOUD-CLEARED INFRARED RADIANCE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2002-08-30 → 2003-02-06
  • Measured byAqua (AIRS, AMSU-A, HSB)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • 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 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. This product is similar to AIRI2CCF. However, it contains science retrievals that use the HSB. Because the HSB instrument lived only from September 2002 through January 2003 when it terminally failed, the data set covers these five months only. Cloud-Cleared Radiances contain calibrated, geolocated channel-by-channel AIRS infrared radiances (milliWatts/m2/cm-1/steradian) that would have been observed within each AMSU footprint if there were no clouds in the FOV and produced along with the AIRS Standard Product, as they are the radiances used to retrieve the Standard Product. Nevertheless, they are an order of magnitude larger in data volume than the remainder of the Standard Products and, many Standard Product users are expected to have little interest in the Cloud Cleared Radiance. For these reasons they are a separate output file, but like the Standard Product, are generated at all locations. An AIRS granule has been set as 6 minutes of data, 30 footprints cross track by 45 lines along track for each of the approximate 2378 channels. There are 240 granules per day, with an orbit repeat cycle of approximately 16 day.

Get the data

airh2ccf_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AIRH2CCF",
    version="7.0",
    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.