AIRS and AMSU: Tropospheric air temperature and specific humidity
Years of Record: 2002/09 to 2011/05
The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) project has generated decadal-length,
global, gridded data sets of temperature and specific humidity for several standard
levels in the troposphere for the obs4MIPS project. This obs4MIPS version of the
AIRS data are available at monthly resolution, 1ºx1º...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global
AVISO: Satellite derived Sea Surface Height above Geoid
Years of Record: 1992/10 to 2010/12
The sea surface height relative to the geoid (the mean ocean surface of the Earth if the ocean is at rest) is derived from TOPEX/Poseidon, Envisat, Jason-1, and OSTM/Jason-2 altimetry measurements. Altimetry is a technique for measuring height. Satellite altimetry measures the time taken by a radar...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global
Cloud observations from MODIS
Years of Record: 1999/12 to 2017/06
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is scanning instrument that makes measurements in 36 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared at spatial resolutions from 250 m to 1 km. There are MODIS instruments aboard two sun-synchronous polar-orbiting NASA satellites:...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | HDF-EOS
Timestep: Daily,Monthly,Weekly
Domain: Global
GPCP (Daily): Global Precipitation Climatology Project
Years of Record: 1996/10 to 2015/11
The 1DD product provides precipitation estimates on a 1-degree grid over the entire globe at 1-day (daily) for the period October 1996 - present. Both the Pentad and 1DD products are consistent with the Version 2 monthly product in the sense that the Pentad and 1DD approximately sum to the monthly...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | binary
Timestep: Daily
Domain: Global
GPCP (Monthly): Global Precipitation Climatology Project
Years of Record: 1979/01 to 2015/11
Data from rain gauge stations, satellites, and sounding observations have been merged to estimate monthly rainfall on a 2.5-degree global grid from 1979 to the present. The careful combination of satellite-based rainfall estimates provides the most complete analysis of rainfall available to date...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | binary
Timestep: Climatology,Monthly
Domain: Global
NASA MERRA
Years of Record: 1979/01 to 2016/11
The Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) was undertaken by NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office with two primary objectives: to place observations from NASA’s Earth Observing System satellites into a climate context and to improve upon the hydrologic...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | HDF
Timestep: Sub-daily,Monthly
Domain: Global
QuikSCAT: near sea-surface wind speed and direction
Years of Record: 1999/08 to 2009/10
The QuikSCAT mission was intended to obtain sea-surface wind speed and direction data under all weather and cloud conditions over Earth's oceans. SeaWinds, an active radar scatterometer, is the main instrument on the QuikSCAT satellite. The microwave backscatter measured by SeaWinds is dependent on...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | binary
Timestep: Daily,Monthly,Weekly
Domain: Global
SST (AMSR-E): Sea Surface Temperature from Remote Sensing Systems
Years of Record: 2002/06 to 2010/12
High resolution (0.25°) SSTs were derived from the AMSR-E, a passive microwave radiometer flying on NASA's AQUA satellite. Remote Sensing Systems distributes the data in high spatial and temporal (daily, weekly, monthly) resolutions for both daytime and nighttime averages. Monthly versions are...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | binary
Timestep: Daily,Monthly,Weekly
Domain: Global
TRMM: Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission
Years of Record: 1998/01 to 2016/10
Note: After 17 years (1997-4/2015) the TRMM mission came to an end. NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) stopped TRMM’s science operations and data collection on April 8, 2015 after the spacecraft depleted its fuel reserves. The Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) is the...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | HDF
Timestep: Sub-daily,Daily,Monthly
Domain: Tropics
