CIVL1180

Monitoring Changing Climate From Space

Prof. Hui Su
Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering

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09 October, 2023
 Brief Review of Last Class

• Atmospheric transmittance and absorption

• Active and passive sensors
• Satellite mission design
• Satellite mission life cycle

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 Satellite Data Processing Levels

http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/earth-science-data/data-processing-levels-for-eosdis-data-products/
Level 2 Data Structure In General
UTC FLOAT = Array [np]
LATITUDE FLOAT = Array [np]
LONGITUDE FLOAT = Array [np]
VALUES FLOAT = Array [np, nz]
PRESSURE FLOAT = Array [np, nz]
OTHER_FLAGS FLOAT = Array [np, nz]
……
An Example of A-Train Data Structure
Aura MLS
UTC FLOAT = Array[3495]
LOCALSOLARTIME FLOAT = Array[3495]
LATITUDE FLOAT = Array[3495]
LONGITUDE FLOAT = Array[3495]
IWC FLOAT = Array[3495,11]
PRESSURE FLOAT = Array[11]
QUALITY FLOAT = Array[3495]
PRECISION FLOAT = Array[3495, 11]
OTHER_FLAGS FLOAT = Array[3495, 11]
…
Aqua Descending Orbits

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Aqua Ascending Orbits

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 Aqua Descending and Ascending Tracks

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3

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2

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See animation at https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003300/a003348/aquacomp512.mp4
Example of Terra satellite orbit track (taken on 15 March 2015). Terra orbits the Earth
from north to south on the daylight side of the globe. At 05:30 UTC the spacecraft was
scanning the Indian Ocean.

Tabone, Ilaria. (2015). Comparison of meteorological observations and WRF model

retrieved Cloud Top Height for the JEM-EUSO experiment.
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2320
Create Level 3 Gridded Data
2007
Create Level 3 Gridded Data (cont.)
Create Level 3 Gridded Data (cont.)
Create Level 3 Gridded Data (cont.)
Create Level 3 Gridded Data (cont.)
Create Level 3 Gridded Data (cont.)
Create Level 3 Gridded Data (cont.)
 LAADS DAAC
Level-1 and Atmosphere Archive & Distribution System Distributed Active Archive Center

https://ladsweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/ • Registration is needed

to download these data.
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 LAADS DAAC

10/8/23 24
 View Data Online

https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/dataprod/ 25
View Online Archive

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Find Data of Interest

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View Selected Swath of Data

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 Download Selected Swath
Download using other programs, including python, can be found here.

YourToken and YourOrderDirectory

can be found here.

python laads-data-download.py -s YourOrderDirectory -d YourLocalDirectory -t YourToken

Python code is available on Canvas in “Files” 29