Instant surface rain rate over the tropics (TROPICS-06)
What it measures. Provides instant surface rain-rate estimates over the tropics, along with vertical profiles of air temperature and moisture and total water vapor in the air column, from one satellite in the TROPICS constellation.
How it's made. Derived from microwave sounder readings aboard the TROPICS-06 small satellite, which measures microwave energy near oxygen and water-vapor frequencies, then retrieves the atmospheric quantities from those signals.
How & where you'd use it. Supports close study of tropical cyclones by repeatedly measuring rainfall and the temperature and humidity structure of storms, in nearly all weather conditions.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2023-06-02 → 2025-03-15
- Measured byTROPICS/06 (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 TROPICS06 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="TROPICS06PRPSL2B",
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
- TROPICS06L2B README VIEW RELATED INFORMATION