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Full catalog/AIRIBQAP_NRT
AIRIBQAP_NRT·v005·dataset

Quality flags for AIRS infrared data (near real-time)

AIRS/Aqua L1B Near Real Time (NRT) Infrared (IR) quality assurance subset V005 (AIRIBQAP_NRT) at GES DISC
land NASA GES_DISC Level 1B active
In plain English

What it measures. Quality-assurance flags for the AIRS infrared instrument, describing how trustworthy each piece of the raw infrared measurement is rather than measuring weather itself.

How it's made. Produced in near real-time alongside the AIRS instrument's data on the Aqua satellite, using faster predictive positioning data to meet a three-hour delivery deadline.

How & where you'd use it. A behind-the-scenes helper product: scientists use these flags to filter the AIRS infrared data and keep only the good-quality readings before doing their own analysis.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › INFRARED RADIANCE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2015-12-15 → ongoing
  • Measured byAqua (AIRS)
  • 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 AIRS Level 1B Near Real Time (NRT) product (AIRIBQAP_NRT_005) differs from the routine product (AIRIBQAP_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 facility instrument 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 Humidity Sounder for Brazil (HSB), AIRS constitutes an innovative atmospheric sounding group of visible, infrared, and microwave sensors. AIRS data will be generated continuously. Global coverage will be obtained twice daily (day and night) on a 1:30pm sun synchronous orbit from a 705-km altitude. The AIRS IR Level 1B QA Subset contains Quality Assurance (QA) parameters that a user of may use to filter AIRS IR Level 1B radiance data to create a subset of analysis. QA parameters indicate quality of granule-per-channel, scan-per-channel, field of view, and channel and should be accessed before any data of analysis. It also contains "glintlat", "glintlon", and "sun_glint_distant" that users can use to check for possibility of solar glint contamination.

Get the data

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AIRIBQAP_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.