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Full catalog/AIRSAQIRL1B
AIRSAQIRL1B·v8.0·dataset

Raw calibrated infrared light the satellite saw (Aqua)

AIRS/Aqua L1B Infrared (IR) geolocated and calibrated radiances V8.0 (AIRSAQIRL1B) at GES DISC at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 1B active
In plain English

What it measures. Records how much infrared light (heat-related energy) the sensor picked up across 2,378 narrow color channels, each carefully calibrated and tagged with its location on Earth.

How it's made. Comes from the AIRS infrared instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite, turning the sensor's raw digital counts into properly calibrated energy values traceable to official standards.

How & where you'd use it. A low-level building-block input: scientists use it to derive temperature, humidity and other atmospheric measurements, so most people encounter it through those higher-level weather and climate products rather than directly.

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 product consists of calibrated radiances, geolocation coordinates, quality control parameters, and calibration engineering support information. This product converts the AIRS raw data in digital counts to radiances referenced to SI (Système international) traceable standards established at NIST for each of the 2378 AIRS channels, and contains ancillary information pertaining to the instrument calibration and performance. In general, the differences between the previous version, V5, and V8 are extremely small and not significant for most applications, however the improvements may have relevance for certain climate applications. The differences also make the product more versatile and contains more information about the calibration that will be useful for future modifications. More information can be found in the AIRS Version 8 Level 1B ATBD and Test Report. The AIRS instrument is co-aligned with AMSU-A so that successive blocks of 3 x 3 AIRS footprints are contained within one AMSU-A footprint. The AIRSAQIRL1B_8 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_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AIRSAQIRL1B",
    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.