Instant rain rate at the surface (TROPICS-03)
What it measures. The instantaneous rate of rainfall reaching the surface, along with atmospheric temperature, moisture, and total water-vapor content in the tropics.
How it's made. Retrieved from microwave measurements by the TMS sounder aboard the small TROPICS-03 satellite, one of a constellation built to watch tropical storms frequently.
How & where you'd use it. Helps scientists study tropical cyclones by capturing rainfall and storm structure with frequent, near-all-weather observations.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2023-06-02 → 2025-11-11
- Measured byTROPICS/03 (TMS)
- Processing levelLevel 2
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
- StatusCOMPLETE
What you can do with it
- Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
- Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
- Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description
The "Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats" (TROPICS) mission has a goal of providing nearly all-weather observations of three-dimensional temperature and humidity, as well as cloud ice and precipitation horizontal structure, at high temporal resolution to conduct high-value science investigations of tropical cyclones. The mission comprises a constellation of five identical Space Vehicles (SVs) conforming to the 3U form factor and hosting a passive microwave spectrometer payload. Each SV hosts an identical high-performance spectrometer named the TROPICS Millimeter-wave Sounder (TMS) that will provide temperature profiles using seven channels near the 118.75-GHz oxygen absorption line, water vapor profiles using three channels near the 183-GHz water vapor absorption line, imagery in a single channel near 90 GHz for precipitation measurements (when combined with higher resolution water vapor channels), and a single channel near 205 GHz that is more sensitive to cloud-sized ice particles. This dataset is from the TROPICS03 satellite, as the Validated Stage-1 version of the Level 2B geophysical retrieval of atmospheric vertical temperature (kelvins) at the larger unified F-band resolution, retrieval of vertical moisture (g/kg) at the finer G-band spatial resolution, and total Precipitable Water (mm) at the finer G-band spatial resolution. Each TROPICS netCDF file contains a granule of data with 81 spots and approximately 2880 scans, where a granule is defined as an orbit's worth of data.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="TROPICS03PRPSL2B",
version="1.0",
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. Official links
- Access the data via HTTPS GET DATA
- Access the data via the OPeNDAP protocol. USE SERVICE API
- Use the Earthdata Search to find and retrieve data sets across multiple data centers. GET DATA
- TROPICS L2b ISRR ATBD VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- TROPICS User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- TROPICS03L2B README VIEW RELATED INFORMATION