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Full catalog/AIRS3QPM
AIRS3QPM·v006·dataset

Monthly atmosphere summary stats (Aqua, AIRS-only, 5 degree)

AIRS/Aqua L3 Monthly Quantization in Physical Units (AIRS-only) 5 degrees x 5 degrees V006 (AIRS3QPM) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 3 active
In plain English

What it measures. Monthly statistical summaries of the atmosphere on a coarse 5-degree grid, including air temperature and water vapor at multiple heights and cloud fraction. It captures not just averages but the spread of conditions.

How it's made. Built by aggregating AIRS infrared sounder retrievals from NASA's Aqua satellite into gridded monthly distributions that preserve the variety of atmospheric states.

How & where you'd use it. Gives climate researchers a compact picture of how temperature, moisture, and clouds vary month to month and place to place.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE › SURFACE TEMPERATURE › AIR TEMPERATURE › AIR TEMPERATURE PROFILEATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR › WATER VAPOR PROFILESATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS › CLOUD PROPERTIES › CLOUD TOP PRESSUREATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS › CLOUD PROPERTIES › CLOUD VERTICAL DISTRIBUTION › CLOUD FRACTION VERTICAL DISTRIBUTION

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2002-09-01 → ongoing
  • Measured byAqua (AIRS)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • 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. AIRS/Aqua Level 3 monthly quantization product is in physical units (AIRS Only). The quantization products (QP) are distributional summaries derived from the Level-2 standard retrieval products (of swath type) to provide a more comprehensive set of statistical summaries than the traditional means and standard deviation. The QP products combine the Level 2 standard data parameters over grid cells of 5 x 5 deg spatial extent for temporal periods of a month. They preserve the multivariate distributional features of the original data and so provide a compressed data set that more accurately describes the disparate atmospheric states that is in the original Level-2 swath data set. The geophysical parameters are: Air Temperature and Water Vapor profiles (11 levels/layers), Cloud fraction (vertical distribution).

Get the data

airs3qpm_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AIRS3QPM",
    version="006",
    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.