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Full catalog/AIRHBRAD
AIRHBRAD·v005·dataset

Calibrated microwave brightness temperatures (Aqua HSB)

AIRS/Aqua L1B HSB geolocated and calibrated brightness temperatures V005 (AIRHBRAD) at GES DISC
land NASA GES_DISC Level 1B
In plain English

What it measures. Calibrated microwave readings expressed as brightness temperature, essentially how warm the atmosphere looks to the sensor across four microwave channels sensitive to humidity, snow and ice, and precipitation.

How it's made. Generated from raw HSB instrument counts on the Aqua satellite into geolocated, calibrated values; HSB operated only briefly in 2002-2003.

How & where you'd use it. A low-level input used to set up atmospheric moisture profiles that feed the combined AIRS retrievals; mostly used via higher-level products rather than on its own.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › MICROWAVE › BRIGHTNESS TEMPERATURE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2002-05-24 → 2003-11-20
  • Measured byAqua (HSB)
  • Processing levelLevel 1B
  • 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. The HSB level 1B data set contains HSB calibrated and geolocated brightness temperatures in degrees Kelvin. This data set is generated from HSB Level 1A digital numbers (DN), including 4 microwave channels in the 150 - 190 GHz region of the spectrum. A day's worth of data is divided into 240 scenes each of 6 minute duration. For the HSB measurements, an individual scene consists of 135 scanlines containing 90 cross-track footprints; thus there is a total of 135 x 90 = 12,150 footprints per HSB scene, which coincide very closely with the AIRS infrared footprints. HSB is primarily a humidity sounder that provides information on snow/ice cover and precipitation using the 150 GHz window channel, and the coarse distribution of moisture in the troposphere using the 183 GHz channels. Combined with simultaneous measurements from the AIRS and AMSU-A instruments, the calibrated HSB brightness temperatures will be used to initialize the atmospheric moisture profile required for the retrieval of the final AIRS geophysical products. An HSB level 1B daily summary browse product is also available to provide users with a global quick look capability when searching for data of interest. Summary Browse Products are high-level pictorial representations of AIRS Instrument (AIRS Infrared, AMSU-A and HSB) data designed as an aid to ordering data from the GSFC DISC or EDG. the HSB instrument failed in November of 2003.

Get the data

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AIRHBRAD",
    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.