Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/AIRVBQAP_NRT
AIRVBQAP_NRT·v005·dataset

Quality flags for AIRS visible-light data (near real-time)

AIRS/Aqua L1B Near Real Time (NRT) Visible/Near Infrared (VIS/NIR) quality assurance subset V005 (AIRVBQAP_NRT) at GES DISC
land NASA GES_DISC Level 1B active
In plain English

What it measures. Carries quality-control flags for AIRS visible and near-infrared light data, including warnings about sun glint, so users can tell which readings are safe to use.

How it's made. Produced from the AIRS instrument on the Aqua satellite in a fast near-real-time mode that skips some normal inputs to deliver results within about three hours.

How & where you'd use it. A filtering helper: people check these flags before using the matching AIRS visible/near-infrared data, especially to avoid pixels spoiled by sun glint.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › INFRARED RADIANCESPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › VISIBLE WAVELENGTHS › VISIBLE RADIANCE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2015-12-15 → ongoing
  • Measured byAqua (AIRS)
  • Processing levelLevel 1B
  • 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 AIRS Level 1B Near Real Time (NRT) product (AIRVBQAP_NRT_005) differs from the routine product (AIRVBQAP_005) 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 Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) Visible/Near Infrared (VIS/NIR) instrument in combination with the AIRS Infrared Spectrometer, the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) and the Humidity Sounder for Brazil (HSB) constitute an innovative atmospheric sounding group aboard the Earth Observing System (EOS) Aqua platform in a near-polar Sun-synchronous orbit with a 1:30 AM/PM equator crossing time and an ~705 km altitude. The AIRS Visible/Near Infrared (VIS/NIR) Level 1B QA Subset contains Quality Assurance (QA) parameters that a may use of filter AIRS VIS/NIR Level 1B radiance data to create a subset of analysis. It includes "state" that user should check before using any VIS/NIR Level 1B data radiance and "glintlat", "glintlon", and "sun_glint_distant" that users can use to check for possibility of solar glint contamination. AIRS VIS/NIR Level 1B radiance data can be found in AIRVBRAD.

Get the data

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AIRVBQAP_NRT",
    version="005",
    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.