Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/AIRS2CCF
AIRS2CCF·v7.0·dataset

Cloud-free infrared light readings from the atmosphere (Aqua)

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

What it measures. Channel-by-channel infrared light readings from the atmosphere, adjusted to estimate what the sensor would have seen if there had been no clouds in view.

How it's made. Produced by the AIRS infrared sounder on the Aqua satellite; these cloud-cleared radiances are the inputs used to generate AIRS's main temperature and humidity products.

How & where you'd use it. A specialized building-block input that most people use indirectly through AIRS's higher-level products rather than directly, because of its very large data volume.

What's measured

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

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2002-08-30 → ongoing
  • Measured byAqua (AIRS)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • 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 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 produced using AIRS IR only because the radiometric noise in several AMSU channels started to increase significantly (since June 2007). 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

airs2ccf_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AIRS2CCF",
    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.