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Full catalog/ML3DBGPH
ML3DBGPH·v005·dataset

Height of pressure levels in the upper air, daily (MLS, Aura)

MLS/Aura Level 3 Daily Binned Geopotential Height (GPH) on Assorted Grids V005 (ML3DBGPH) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 3 active
In plain English

What it measures. The height of different pressure layers in the upper atmosphere, day by day. In plain terms, it tracks how high up you have to go to reach a given air pressure, which reveals the structure of the atmosphere far above the ground.

How it's made. Derived from natural microwave energy picked up by the Microwave Limb Sounder instrument on NASA's Aura satellite, then averaged onto daily maps.

How & where you'd use it. Used by atmospheric scientists to study weather patterns, jet streams, and changes in the upper atmosphere over time.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › ALTITUDE › GEOPOTENTIAL HEIGHT

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2004-08-02 → ongoing
  • Measured byAura (MLS)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -82, 180, 82
  • 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

ML3DBGPH is the EOS Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) daily binned on various vertical grids product for geopotential height (GPH) derived from radiances measured by the 118 and 240 GHz radiometers. The data version is 5.1. Data coverage is from August 2, 2005 to current. Spatial coverage is near-global (-82 to +82 degrees latitude), with a spatial resolution of 4 degrees latitude by 5 degrees longitude. The recommended useful vertical range is between 261 and 0.001 hPa, and the vertical resolution varies between ~3.6 and 6 km. Users of the ML3DBGPH data product should read chapter 4 and section 3.8 of the EOS MLS Level 2 Version 5 Quality Document for more information. The data files are archived in the netCDF4 format, which is also compatible with HDF5 readers and tools. Each file contains two grid objects (profile and column data), each with a set of data and geolocation fields, grid attributes, and metadata.

Get the data

ml3dbgph_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ML3DBGPH",
    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.