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Full catalog/ML3DZT
ML3DZT·v005·dataset

Air temperature high in the atmosphere, daily by latitude (Aura MLS)

MLS/Aura Level 3 Daily Binned Temperature on Zonal and Similar Grids V005 (ML3DZT) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 3 active
In plain English

What it measures. Air temperature high in the atmosphere, averaged daily into bands by latitude, covering most of the globe and reaching from the upper atmosphere down toward the stratosphere.

How it's made. Retrieved from the Microwave Limb Sounder on NASA's Aura satellite, which reads microwave radiation, then binned into daily zonal grids and packaged in yearly files.

How & where you'd use it. Supports research on the upper atmosphere and stratosphere, including temperature structure related to features like 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

ML3DZT is the EOS Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) daily binned on zonal and assorted 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 4 degree latitude zonal increments. 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 ML3DZT 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 contain one year of data and are archived in the netCDF4 format, which is also compatible with HDF5 readers and tools. Each file contains four group objects: lat vs pressure zonal mean, lat vs "potential temperature" zonal mean, "equivalent latitude" vs "potential temperature" zonal mean, and vortex average vs "potential temperature". Each group has a set of data (average, min, max, std dev, rms) and geolocation fields, grid attributes, and metadata.

Get the data

ml3dzt_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ML3DZT",
    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.