Weather data to support polar heat measurements (PREFIRE Sat 1)
What it measures. Supporting weather and surface information matched to PREFIRE Satellite 1's observations, including surface and skin temperatures, sea ice, snow cover, air pressure, and profiles of temperature, ozone, and wind through the atmosphere.
How it's made. Assembled from GEOS-IT weather analyses and VIIRS satellite data, trimmed and interpolated to line up with each PREFIRE-SAT1 measurement.
How & where you'd use it. A companion dataset that other PREFIRE products rely on for context, rather than something used on its own.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2024-07-24 → ongoing
- Measured byPREFIRE-SAT1 (TIRS-PREFIRE)
- Processing levelLevel NA
- Spatial extent-180, -84, 180, 84
- FormatsnetCDF-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
Polar Radiant Energy in the Far InfraRed Experiment (PREFIRE) Auxiliary Meteorology Data for PREFIRE Satellite 1 (PREFIRE_SAT1_AUX-MET) contains GEOS-IT analyses and VIIRS satellite data that are subsets and interpolations corresponding to data collected by the PREFIRE Thermal Infrared Spectrometer (TIRS-PREFIRE) aboard PREFIRE-SAT1. Dual PREFIRE CubeSats each carry a PREFIRE Thermal Infrared Spectrometer (TIRS-PREFIRE), a push broom spectrometer with 63 channels measuring mid- and far-infrared (FIR) radiation from approximately 5 to 53 µm. Most polar emissions are in the FIR but have not been measured on a large scale. PREFIRE aims to fill knowledge gaps in the global energy budget by more accurately characterizing polar emissions. This information will then be assimilated into global circulation and other models to predict future conditions more accurately.PREFIRE_SAT1_AUX-MET contains surface and skin temperatures, land fraction, sea ice concentration, snow cover, surface pressure, temperature profiles, pressure profiles, O3 profiles, wind velocity profiles, and surface type. Science data retrieval started July 24, 2024 and is ongoing. Geographic coverage is global, with the greatest concentration of data in the polar regions. Within the orbital swath there are eight distinct tracks of data associated with the eight separate spatial scenes for each PREFIRE-TIRS. At the beginning of the mission, the approximate scene footprint sizes were 11.8 km x 34.8 km (cross-track x along-track), with gaps between each scene of approximately 24.2 km. The entire swath was ~264 km across. Note that the scene footprint and swath sizes quoted here are for the orbit altitude soon after launch. However, the footprint size will slowly become smaller as the orbit altitude decreases with time. This data has a temporal resolution of 0.707 seconds and is available in netCDF-4.The auxiliary meteorology data for the sister instrument aboard PREFIRE-SAT2 can be found in the PREFIRE_SAT2_AUX-MET collection.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="PREFIRE_SAT1_AUX-MET",
version="R01",
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 LARC_CLOUDBrowsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package. Official links
- Data User Guide Auxiliary Meteorology (AUX-MET) VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- Earthdata Search for PREFIRE_SAT1_AUX-MET_R01 (NASA Application to search, discover, visualize, refine, and access NASA Earth Observation data) GET DATA
- How to cite ASDC data VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- DIRECT DOWNLOAD GET DATA
- DIRECT DOWNLOAD GET DATA
- PREFIRE SAT 1 operations log VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- PREFIRE_PCRTM_V3.4 ancillary data GET DATA
- PREFIRE Spectral Response Function data (SRFs): v13 GET DATA