NOAA Climate Data Record (CDR) of SSMI(S) and AMSR2 Microwave Brightness Temperatures, CSU Version 2

This NOAA Fundamental Climate Data Record (FCDR) from Colorado State University (CSU) contains brightness temperatures that have been improved and quality-controlled over the observational time period. The temperature data are from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) and Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder (SSMIS) series of passive microwave radiometers carried onboard the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellites, and from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) carried onboard the Global Change Observation Mission 1st - Water (GCOM-W1) satellite. The dataset encompasses data from a total of 11 satellites including the SSM/I sensors on board DMSP satellites F08, F10, F11, F13, F14, and F15, the SSMIS sensors on board DMSP satellites F16, F17, F18, and F19, as well as AMSR2 on board GCOM-W1. The DMSP satellites F09 and F12 were not used. The data record covers the time period from July 1987 beginning with SSM/I through the present with a 7 to 10 day latency. There are roughly 15 orbits per satellite per day with a swath width of approximately 1400 km resulting in nearly global daily coverage. The spatial and temporal resolutions of the FCDR files correspond to the original resolution of the source Temperature Data Record (TDR) observations. The spatial resolution of the data is a function of the sensor/channel and varies from approximately ~50 km for the lowest frequency channels to ~15km for the high-frequency channels. The output parameters include the observed brightness temperatures for each channel at the original sensor channel resolution along with latitude and longitude for each pixel, time, quality flags, and view angle information. Interim updates to the FCDR, notated as ICDR, are produced on an operational basis as new source data become available. The initially-produced interim files or ICDR files are produced prior to the final FCDR production. Once the data has been fully checked, updates for the final FCDR files are provided approximately every year. There are several changes to Version 2 from Version 1 of the FCDR. 1) The addition of inter-calibrated data from the GCOM-W1 AMSR2 instrument for the period from July 2, 2012 to the present. 2) A change from relative inter calibration to SSM/I on board DMSP F13 to an absolute calibration based on the well-documented and published calibration of the GPM GMI instrument. 3) Multiple updates to geolocation and calibration corrections to the SSM/I and SSMIS brightness temperature data including improved geolocation and pointing information, updated cross-track bias corrections, updated corrections for solar intrusions, and updated inter calibration adjustments incorporating corrections over both cold and warm scenes. The file format is netCDF-4 with added metadata that follow the Climate and Forecast (CF) Conventions and Attribute Convention for Dataset Discovery (ACDD).