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Full catalog/TOVSBMND
TOVSBMND·v01·dataset

Old monthly weather and temperature grids (NOAA-12)

TOVS LMD MONTHLY GRIDS from NOAA-12 V01 (TOVSBMND) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 3
In plain English

What it measures. Monthly snapshots of atmospheric conditions like temperature, laid out on a worldwide grid of roughly 100-kilometer squares. The numbers come from older weather-sounder readings reworked into easy-to-map averages.

How it's made. Built from microwave and infrared sounding instruments on the NOAA-12 satellite, then processed with a retrieval method developed in France and averaged into monthly 1-degree grids as part of NASA's TOVS Pathfinder project.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for studying long-term weather and climate patterns from the early 1990s, especially for researchers piecing together a consistent historical record across older satellites.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › OXYGEN COMPOUNDS › ATMOSPHERIC OZONEATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE › SURFACE TEMPERATURE › SKIN TEMPERATUREATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE › UPPER AIR TEMPERATUREATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR › WATER VAPOR INDICATORS › HUMIDITYATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR › WATER VAPOR INDICATORS › WATER VAPORATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR › WATER VAPOR PROFILESATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1991-06-30 → 1995-07-01
  • Measured byNOAA-12 (HIRS/2, MSU, TOVS)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • 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

Level 3 parameters from HIRS/2 and MSU radiances using the Improved Initialization Inversion (3I) classification retrieval scheme by the Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique (Ecole Polytechnique) averaged over 1 month and mapped on to a 1x1 degree grid. This data was run as part of the NASA TOVS Pathfinder project and designated as Path-B. This dataset contains data from the NOAA-12 satellite.

Get the data

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="TOVSBMND",
    version="01",
    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.