Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/AIRS_MLS_IND
AIRS_MLS_IND·v1.0·dataset

Index matching AIRS and MLS observations (Aqua)

Aqua AIRS-MLS Matchup Indexes V1.0 (AIRS_MLS_IND) at GES_DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 2
In plain English

What it measures. Not measurements of the sky itself, but a lookup table that links matching observations from two different instruments — pairing each AIRS profile with the corresponding MLS profile at the same place.

How it's made. Assembled by collocating measurements from the AIRS instrument on Aqua and the MLS instrument on Aura, two satellites that fly close together, and saving the matching indexes in netCDF files.

How & where you'd use it. A helper file that lets researchers stitch the two instruments' water-vapor measurements into one full top-to-bottom profile of the air, since each instrument sees a different altitude range well.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2004-08-08 → 2016-09-25
  • Measured byAqua (AIRS) · Aura (MLS)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -82, 180, 82
  • StatusCOMPLETE

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

This dataset is part of MEaSUREs 2012 Program, and represent Aqua/AIRS-Aura/MLS collocation indexes, in netCDF-4 format. These data map AIRS profile indexes to those of MLS. The A-Train provides water vapor (H2O) retrievals from both the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS). While AIRS loses sensitivity to H2O at the elevated portions of the upper troposphere (UT), MLS cannot detect H2O below 316 hPa. Therefore, to obtain a full profile of H2O in the whole column of air, this dataset manages to join the two products together by utilizing their own averaging kernels (AK). In doing so, the dataset builds a solid H2O of the whole column of air, which will help understand the H2O budget and many processes governing the humidity around the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS). The short name for this collections is AIRS_MLS_IND

Get the data

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AIRS_MLS_IND",
    version="1.0",
    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.