National Snow And Ice Data Center Releases AMSR-E Satellite Surface Temperature Data

I just got this in the mail late yesterday. The National Snow And Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has just released several new climate products, including minimum and maximum air surface temperatures.

Here's the e-mail:

NSIDC is pleased to announce the release of the Daily Global Land Surface Parameters Derived from AMSR-E data set. This data set contains satellite-retrieved geophysical parameters generated from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) instrument on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Aqua satellite. Parameters include:

-Air temperature minima and maxima at approximately 2 meters in height

-Fractional cover of open water on land

-Vegetation canopy microwave transmittance

-Surface soil moisture at less than or equal to 2 centimeters soil depth

-Integrated water vapor content of the intervening atmosphere for the total column

The daily parameter retrievals extend from 19 June 2002 through 31 December 2008. The global retrievals were derived over land for non-precipitating, non-snow, and non-ice covered conditions. The primary input data were daily AMSR-E dual polarized multi-frequency, ascending and descending overpass brightness temperature data.

For more information regarding this data set, please see http://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0451.html.

This is pretty timely. There's several simultaneous attempts going on right now to better understand Urban Heat Islands (UHI). The minima/maxima temperatures at 6 meters should be particularly relevant to these studies. A signature of UHI is the night time temperatures go up, while the day time temperatures stay about the same. This new data will give us the tools we need to look for UHI directly on a global scale.

And since the AMSR-E used to gather this data is part of the Aqua satellite, I can fold in studying the new data with the work on the satellite.

So expect to hear more about this in the near future.