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Full catalog/hs3nrltrop
hs3nrltrop·v1·dataset

Tropical satellite data during hurricane flights (HS3)

Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Tropics Satellite Data V1
atmosphere NASA GHRC_DAAC Level 2 JPEG
In plain English

What it measures. Browse-only picture files showing tropical satellite views during hurricane research, including how warm surfaces look to the sensor (brightness temperature), rain rate, and color composite imagery.

How it's made. Assembled by the Naval Research Laboratory from many weather satellites for the HS3 hurricane field campaign, provided as JPG images for dates in 2013 and 2014.

How & where you'd use it. Helped researchers study tropical storm formation and intensification, including the role of Saharan dust. These are quick-look images for visual reference rather than analysis-ready numerical data.

What's measured

Atmosphere › Clouds › Convective Clouds/Systems (Observed/Analyzed)Spectral/Engineering › Infrared Wavelengths › Brightness TemperatureAtmosphere › Precipitation › Precipitation Rate

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2013-07-23 → 2014-09-30
  • Measured byNOAA-18 (AMSU-A, AVHRR) · DMSP 5D-3/F16 (SSMIS) · NOAA-19 (AMSU-A, AVHRR) · GPM (GMI) · TRMM (PR, TMI) · CORIOLIS (WINDSAT) · DMSP 5D-3/F15 (SSM/I) · METOP-A (AMSU-A) · DMSP 5D-3/F17 (SSMIS) · DMSP 5D-3/F18 (SSMIS)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-113.5, 2.2, -9, 53.9
  • FormatsJPEG
  • StatusCOMPLETE

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 Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Tropics Satellite Data contains browse only data files, including brightness temperature, rain rate, and Red, Green, Blue (RGB) composite imagery, for the Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) field campaign. Goals for the HS3 field campaign included assessing the relative roles of large-scale environmental and storm-scale internal processes, addressing the controversial role of the Saharan Air Layer (SAL) in tropical storm formation and intensification, and the role of deep convection in the inner-core region of storms. These browse only data files are available for dates between April 22, 2013 and September 30, 2014 in JPG format.

Get the data

hs3nrltrop_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="hs3nrltrop",
    version="1",
    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 GHRC_DAAC
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.