Datasets / NOAA Climate Data Record (CDR) of Intersatellite Calibrated Clear-Sky HIRS Channel 12 Brightness Temperature, Version 2.6


NOAA Climate Data Record (CDR) of Intersatellite Calibrated Clear-Sky HIRS Channel 12 Brightness Temperature, Version 2.6

Published By National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Issued over 9 years ago

US
beta

Summary

Type of release
ongoing release of a series of related datasets

Data Licence
Not Applicable

Content Licence
Creative Commons CCZero

Verification
automatically awarded

Description

This NOAA Climate Data Record (CDR) of Inter-Satellite Calibrated Clear-Sky High Resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder (HIRS) Channel 12 brightness temperatures contains over 30 years (1978-2013) of data. Among the twenty channels in the HIRS instrument, channel 12 measures upper tropospheric water vapor (UTWV). Multiple polar orbiting satellites in the NOAA Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite (POES) series and MetOp-A have carried HIRS instruments. Due to the independence in calibration of the individual HIRS instruments, biases exist between satellites. Examination of the intersatellite biases shows that the biases are scene brightness temperature dependent. These HIRS channel 12 measurements from the NOAA POES and MetOp-A are calibrated to a baseline satellite based on intersatellite bias correction data. The differences from the last version include that the dataset is now provided as monthly mean 2.5x2.5 degree latitude/longitude in netcdf format and the time series has been extended to the end of 2013. This CDR is key to understanding water vapor feedback climatology.