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Full catalog/AIRSAQIRL1B_NRT
AIRSAQIRL1B_NRT·v8.0·dataset

Raw infrared brightness from the sky (Aqua, near real-time)

AIRS/Aqua L1B Near Real Time (NRT) Infrared (IR) geolocated and calibrated radiances V8.0 (AIRSAQIRL1B_NRT) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 1B active
In plain English

What it measures. How much infrared energy the sky and Earth give off as seen by the sensor, recorded as calibrated, location-tagged brightness across 2,378 infrared channels. This is the raw sensor measurement before any atmospheric quantities are extracted.

How it's made. Produced from the AIRS infrared spectrometer on NASA's Aqua satellite as a fast near-real-time Level 1B product, delivered within about three hours by using predicted rather than final orbit data.

How & where you'd use it. A raw building-block input for atmospheric retrievals; its speed suits time-sensitive applications, but most users access the information through higher-level temperature and moisture products.

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

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 the spectrum. The AIRS Level 1B Near Real Time (NRT) product (AIRSIRAQL1B_NRT_v8.0) differs from the routine product (AIRSAQIRL1B_8) in 2 ways to meet the three hour latency requirements of the Land Atmosphere NRT Capability Earth Observing System (LANCE): (1) The NRT granules are produced without previous or subsequent granules if those granules are not available within 5 minutes, (2) the predictive ephemeris/attitude data are used rather than the definitive ephemeris/attitude. The consequences of these differences are described in the AIRS Near Real Time (NRT) data products document. The 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

airsaqirl1b_nrt_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AIRSAQIRL1B_NRT",
    version="8.0",
    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.