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

Calibrated raw visible and infrared imagery, live (Aqua)

AIRS/Aqua L1B Near Real Time (NRT) Visible/Near Infrared (VIS/NIR) geolocated and calibrated radiances V005 (AIRVBRAD_NRT) at GES DISC
land NASA GES_DISC Level 1B active
In plain English

What it measures. Raw but calibrated daytime imagery of how much visible and near-infrared light the sensor caught, across four color bands from blue to near-infrared. It records the actual brightness reaching the instrument, with each pixel tied to a location on Earth.

How it's made. Comes from the AIRS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite, processed quickly (within about three hours) so it can be used while events are still unfolding, using best-guess orbit data rather than the final precise version.

How & where you'd use it. A fast-turnaround building-block product used for near-real-time monitoring; most people use it as an input to other analyses rather than viewing it directly. Because it's daytime-only, there's less of it than the round-the-clock infrared data.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › VISIBLE WAVELENGTHS › VISIBLE RADIANCE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2018-11-01 → 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 Visible/Near Infrared (VIS/NIR) Level 1B Near Real Time (NRT) product (AIRVBRAD_NRT_005) differs from the routine product (AIRVBRAD_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 AIRS VIS/NIR level 1B data set contains visible and near-infrared calibrated and geolocated radiances in W/m^2/micron/steradian for 4 channels in the 0.4 to 1.0 um region of the spectrum. The spectral range of the VIS/NIR channels are as follows: Channel 1 0.41 um - 0.44 um, Channel 2 0.58 um - 0.68 um, Channel 3 0.71 um - 0.92 um, Channel 4 0.49 um - 0.94 um. The AIRVBRAD_NRT_005 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. The VIS/NIR granules are only produced in the daytime so there will always be fewer VIS/NIR granules than Infrared or microwave granules.

Get the data

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AIRVBRAD_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.