The Level-2 AIRS-LMD cloud climatology developed by the ARA science team at IPSL consists of cloud products listed in the table below, which also points to a product documentation. Products are provided for the period 2003-2009, separately for observations at 1:30 PM (ascending phase of orbit, i.e. daytime) and at 1:30 AM (descending phase of orbit, i.e. nighttime). The original spatial resolution of the L2 cloud products is 13.5 km at nadir and is 0.4° for the global gridded maps, which are also included in the netcdf files.

The data sets, retrieval method and evaluation with CALIPSO/CALIOP and CloudSat/CPR data are also described in the reference paper by Stubenrauch et al., 2010.

AIRS-LMD Level-2 cloud products
Retrieved parameterProduct NameSensorSpatial
Resolution
Level-2 AIRS-LMD Cloud climatology redirection to documentation Resp.: C. Stubenrauch (IPSL/LMD)
Cloud type (1-8)
Cloud pressure
Cloud pressure uncertainty
Cloud temperature
Cloud temperature uncertainty
Cloud emissivity
Cloud emissivity uncertainty
L2-CLD-AIRS-LMD redirection to documentation AIRS13.5kmx13.5km
0.4°x0.4°

File Naming Convention

The Level-2 AIRS-LMD products are made available in NetCDF format.

AQUA_L2-CLD-AIRS-LMD_<YYYY-MM-DDThh-mm-ss>_V<X-XX>.nc

AQUA = AQUA mission
L2-CLD-AIRS-LMD = Level-2 product name
<YYYY-MM-DDThh-mm-ss> = Date (Year,Month,Day,hour,minute,second)
V<X-XX> = Product version
.nc = netCDF file suffix

Example : AQUA_L2-CLD-AIRS-LMD_2009-01-01T13-30-00_V1-00.nc