Full catalog/TROPICS06URADL2A
TROPICS06URADL2A·v1.0·dataset

Raw microwave brightness readings (TROPICS-06)

TROPICS06 L2A Unified Resolution Brightness Temperatures V1.0
land NASA GES_DISC Level 2
In plain English

What it measures. Raw microwave readings showing how much natural microwave energy different parts of the Earth and atmosphere give off, which relates to temperature and humidity in the air and to ice and rain in storms.

How it's made. Recorded by the millimeter-wave sounder on the small TROPICS-06 satellite, then geo-located and adjusted so all channels share a common resolution at this early (Stage-1) processing stage.

How & where you'd use it. A building-block input aimed at tracking the inner structure and intensity of tropical cyclones; most people would use the finished temperature, humidity, and rain products built from it rather than these raw readings.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › MICROWAVE › BRIGHTNESS TEMPERATURE

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 2A geolocated brightness temperature with the water vapor sounding channels (Ch. 9 to 12) converted from their native G-band resolution to the temperature sounding channel (F-band) native resolution (i.e., all measurements at the same unified larger resolution). This product is used in the Atmospheric Vertical Temperature Profile (AVTP) retrievals to gain the benefit of averaging the G-band channels (i.e., noise reduction) while maintain the F-band (AVTP) spatial resolution. The conversion uses the Backus-Gilbert technique. 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

tropics06uradl2a_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="TROPICS06URADL2A",
    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.