Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/AMSR-L1A
AMSR-L1A·v3·dataset

Raw sensor counts from a microwave satellite (ADEOS-II)

AMSR/ADEOS-II L1A Raw Observation Counts V002
land NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 1A HDF4
In plain English

What it measures. The raw, unprocessed observation counts from a microwave instrument. There are no finished temperature or moisture measurements here yet, just the sensor's earliest packaged numbers.

How it's made. Processed from the most basic Level 0 data of the AMSR instrument on Japan's ADEOS-II satellite by Japan's space agency.

How & where you'd use it. A low-level building-block input; people generally use the calibrated, higher-level products built from it rather than these raw counts directly.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › MICROWAVE › SENSOR COUNTS

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2003-04-02 → 2003-10-24
  • Measured byADEOS-II (AMSR)
  • Processing levelLevel 1A
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsHDF4
  • StatusCOMPLETE

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 AMSR/ADEOS-II L1A Raw Observing Counts (AMSR-L1A) data set was processed from Level 0 science packet data by the JAXA Earth Observation Center (EOC) in Japan.

Get the data

amsr-l1a_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AMSR-L1A",
    version="3",
    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 NSIDC_CPRD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.