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Full catalog/ML3DBT
ML3DBT·v005·dataset

Daily air temperature high in the atmosphere (Aura)

MLS/Aura Level 3 Daily Binned Temperature on Assorted Grids V005 (ML3DBT) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 3 active
In plain English

What it measures. Daily air temperature high up in the atmosphere, from the lower stratosphere all the way to very thin air near the top, averaged into near-global grids.

How it's made. Derived from the Microwave Limb Sounder on NASA's Aura satellite, which reads natural microwave emissions at the edge of Earth's atmosphere, binned daily onto various vertical grids.

How & where you'd use it. Supports studies of the upper atmosphere, including stratospheric processes and the polar vortex.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE › UPPER AIR TEMPERATURE

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

ML3DBT is the EOS Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) daily binned on various vertical grids product for temperature derived from radiances measured by the 118 and 240 GHz radiometers. The data version is 5.1. Spatial coverage is near-global (-82 to +82 degrees latitude) at a spatial resolution of 4 degrees latitude by 5 degrees longitude. The recommended useful vertical range is from 261 to 0.001 hPa, and the vertical resolution is between 3 and 6 km. Users of the ML3DBT data product should read chapter 4 and section 3.22 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 six group objects: lat-lon map vs pressure, lat vs pressure zonal mean, lat-lon map vs theta, lat vs theta zonal mean, equivalent lat vs theta zonal mean, and vortex average vs theta. Each group has a set of data (average, min, max, std dev, rms) and geolocation fields, grid attributes, and metadata.

Get the data

ml3dbt_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ML3DBT",
    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.