Water vapor in the air from old Nimbus satellite
What it measures. Daily global readings of how much water vapor sits high in the atmosphere, captured as radiative temperatures in a narrow infrared band sensitive to upper-air moisture.
How it's made. Recorded by the THIR instrument aboard NASA's Nimbus-4 satellite, an early-1970s mission, and packaged as swath-level measurements.
How & where you'd use it. Useful for mapping historical upper-atmosphere water vapor and extending the record of how moisture moved through the upper troposphere and stratosphere decades ago.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span1970-05-10 → 1971-03-25
- Measured byNimbus-4 (6.7um Radiometer, THIR)
- Processing levelLevel 1
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
- FormatsHDF5
- StatusCOMPLETE
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
This data set (NmTHIR67-1H) consists of daily, global radiative temperatures measured in the 6.7 µm window (6.5 µm - 7.0 µm) by the Temperature-Humidity Infrared Radiometer (THIR) on board the Nimbus 4 satellite. The THIR 6.7 µm window was used to map the water vapor distribution in the upper troposphere and stratosphere.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="NmTHIR67-1H",
version="1",
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 NSIDC_CPRDBrowsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package. Official links
- Search and order NASA Earth Science data using spatial and temporal filters. Reformatting, reprojecting, and subsetting options are available for some data sets. GET DATA
- Quickly download a few files using a web browser, or access data through a command-line utility such as WGET. GET DATA
- Search data by spatial and/or temporal ranges or file name. Choose from various download options, including a Python script. GET DATA
- A Python library to search and access NASA Earth science data with just a few lines of code GET DATA
- Find more data access options and help resources. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- Nimbus Temperature-Humidity Infrared Radiometer 6.7 µm Water Vapor Swath L1, HDF5, Version 1 User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION