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Full catalog/ML3MBH2O
ML3MBH2O·v005·dataset

Water vapor high in the atmosphere, monthly (Aura MLS)

MLS/Aura Level 3 Monthly Binned Water Vapor (H2O) Mixing Ratio on Assorted Grids V005 (ML3MBH2O) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 3 active
In plain English

What it measures. Monthly maps of how much water vapor sits high up in the atmosphere, at many altitude levels, covering almost the whole globe except the poles.

How it's made. Derived from the Microwave Limb Sounder on NASA's Aura satellite, which senses faint microwave signals from the atmosphere's edge, then averaged into monthly grids.

How & where you'd use it. Helps scientists track upper-atmosphere moisture, which plays a role in climate and in the chemistry of the stratosphere; a specialist product that comes with detailed quality guidance.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR › WATER VAPOR PROFILES › WATER VAPOR MIXING RATIO PROFILES

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

ML3MBH2O is the EOS Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) monthly binned on various vertical grids product for water vapor (H2O) derived from radiances measured primarily by the 190 GHz radiometer. 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 between 316 and 0.00215 hPa, and the vertical resolution is about 1.5 km at 316 hPa increasing to 3.5 km to 4.64 hPa, and degrades to 15 km above 0.1 hPa. Users of the ML3MBH2O data product should read chapter 4 and section 3.9 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

ml3mbh2o_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="ML3MBH2O",
    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.