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Full catalog/msutlt
msutlt·v6·dataset

How much warmer or cooler the lower air is than normal

AMSU/MSU Lowtroposphere Day/Month Temperature Anomalies and Annual Cycle V6
atmosphere NASA GHRC_DAAC Level 3 ASCIInetCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. How much warmer or cooler the lower atmosphere is compared with its long-term normal, going back to 1978, along with the normal seasonal cycle of temperatures.

How it's made. Derived from microwave readings taken by sounding instruments (MSU and AMSU-A) flown on a long line of NOAA satellites and on Aqua, processed into temperature figures for the lower troposphere.

How & where you'd use it. A key long-term record for tracking how the lower atmosphere's temperature is changing over the decades.

What's measured

Atmosphere › Atmospheric Temperature › Surface Temperature › Air Temperature

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1978-01-01 → ongoing
  • Measured byNOAA-11 (MSU) · NOAA-6 (MSU) · NOAA-12 (MSU) · NOAA-14 (MSU) · Aqua (AMSU-A) · NOAA-18 (AMSU-A) · NOAA-7 (MSU) · NOAA-8 (MSU) · NOAA-10 (MSU) · NOAA-19 (AMSU-A) · TIROS-N (MSU) · NOAA-9 (MSU) · NOAA-15 (AMSU-A)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsASCII, netCDF-4
  • 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

The AMSU/MSU Lowtroposphere Day/Month Temperature Anomalies and Annual Cycle V6 dataset consists of temperature anomalies and annual cycle temperatures derived from the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) and the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-A (AMSU-A) radiance data since January 1978. All products are derived for the lower troposphere. The dataset begins on January 1, 1978 and is still currently ongoing. The data are available in netCDF-4 and ASCII formats.

Get the data

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="msutlt",
    version="6",
    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.