Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/AIRS2RET
AIRS2RET·v7.0·dataset

Temperature and humidity profiles of the air (AIRS)

Aqua/AIRS L2 Standard Physical Retrieval (AIRS-only) V7.0 at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 2 active
In plain English

What it measures. Vertical profiles of the atmosphere, showing how temperature and humidity change with altitude, plus amounts of gases like ozone, carbon monoxide, and methane, and information about clouds and the surface. It comes with error estimates.

How it's made. Retrieved from the AIRS infrared instrument on the Aqua satellite, which reads the atmosphere's heat signature; this version relies on the infrared sensor alone after a companion microwave instrument grew noisy.

How & where you'd use it. Feeds weather forecasting and climate studies and helps researchers understand the structure of the atmosphere and its gases.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › AIR QUALITY › CARBON MONOXIDEATMOSPHERE › AIR QUALITY › TROPOSPHERIC OZONEATMOSPHERE › ALTITUDE › GEOPOTENTIAL HEIGHTATMOSPHERE › ALTITUDE › TROPOPAUSEATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › CARBON AND HYDROCARBON COMPOUNDS › METHANEATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › OXYGEN COMPOUNDS › ATMOSPHERIC OZONEATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › SULFUR COMPOUNDS › SULFUR DIOXIDEATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE › SURFACE PRESSUREATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC RADIATION › OUTGOING LONGWAVE RADIATIONATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE › SURFACE TEMPERATUREATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE › SURFACE TEMPERATURE › AIR TEMPERATUREATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE › UPPER AIR TEMPERATUREATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR › WATER VAPOR INDICATORS › TOTAL PRECIPITABLE WATERATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR › WATER VAPOR PROFILES

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

  • Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
  • Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
  • Feed weather and air-quality analysis
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 similar to AIRX2RET. It produced using AIRS IR only because the radiometric noise in several AMSU channels began increase significantly (since June 2007). The AIRS Standard Retrieval Product consists of retrieved estimates of cloud and surface properties, plus profiles of retrieved temperature, water vapor, ozone, carbon monoxide and methane. Estimates of the errors associated with these quantities is also part of the Standard Product. The temperature profile vertical resolution is 28 levels total between 1100 mb and 0.1 mb, while moisture profile is reported at 14 atmospheric layers between 1100 mb and 50 mb. The horizontal resolution is 50 km for AMSU, and 13.5 for an IR footprint. An AIRS granule has been set as 6 minutes of data, 30 footprints cross track by 45 lines along track. There are 240 granules per day, with an orbit repeat cycle of approximately 16 day.

Get the data

airs2ret_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AIRS2RET",
    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.