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Full catalog/AIRIBRAD
AIRIBRAD·v005·dataset

Raw infrared brightness measurements (Aqua)

AIRS/Aqua L1B Infrared (IR) geolocated and calibrated radiances V005 (AIRIBRAD) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 1B active
In plain English

What it measures. Raw, calibrated infrared readings from the AIRS sounder, capturing how much infrared energy the instrument detected across many wavelengths, with precise location for each measurement.

How it's made. Recorded by the AIRS infrared spectrometer aboard NASA's Aqua satellite; this is an early-stage Level-1B product of calibrated radiances, not a finished map of any single quantity.

How & where you'd use it. A building-block input that scientists turn into higher-level products like temperature and water-vapor profiles; most people use those derived products rather than this raw data. (Note: a 2021 spacecraft maneuver shifted the readings slightly, and the providers suggest a newer product for some uses.)

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › DUST/ASH/SMOKEATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › SULFUR COMPOUNDS › SULFUR DIOXIDESPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › INFRARED RADIANCE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2002-08-30 → ongoing
  • Measured byAqua (AIRS)
  • Processing levelLevel 1B
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • StatusACTIVE

What you can do with it

  • Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
  • Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
  • Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description

WARNING: On 2021/09/23 the EOS Aqua executed a Deep Space Maneuver (DSM). In the DSM, the spacecraft is turned such that the normal Earth field of regard is deep space. The thermal impact of the DSM caused a shift of the centroids of spectral response functions (SRF) of about 1% of the width of the SRF, equivalent to a frequency shift of 9 parts per million. This shift is reflected in the “spectral_freq” parameter (observed frequencies) in the L1b v5 files for each 6 minute granule. The magnitude of the effect on brightness temperatures (BT) depends on the spectral gradient of each channel. Maximum BT shifts are approximately +- 0.5 K, although many channels experience far smaller BT shifts. Approximately 1803 channels have BT shifts of less than 0.1 K and 575 channels are now shifted in BT by more than 0.1 K, while 231 of these channels have BT shifts greater than 0.2 K. Users of the L1b v5 product who are concerned that these shifts may impact their science investigations and applications are encouraged to switch to the AIRS L1c v6.7.4 product, which, among many other improvements, converts the spectra to a fixed frequency grid. END OF WARNING. 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 AIRS Infrared (IR) level 1B data set contains AIRS calibrated and geolocated radiances in milliWatts/m^2/cm^-1/steradian for 2378 infrared channels in the 3.74 to 15.4 micron region of t he spectrum. The AIRS instrument is co-aligned with AMSU-A so that successive blocks of 3 x 3 AIRS footprints are contained within one AMSU-A footprint. The AIRIBRAD_005 products are stored in files (often referred to as "granules") that contain 6 minutes of data, 90 footprints across track by 135 lines along track.

Get the data

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

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