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Description

The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) instrument on the NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) Aqua satellite provides global passive microwave measurements of terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric variables for the investigation of global water and energy cycles.

The AMSR-E Level-2A product (AE_L2A) contains brightness temperatures at 6.9 GHz, 10.7 GHz, 18.7 GHz, 23.8 GHz, 36.5 GHz, and 89.0 GHz. Data are resampled to be spatially consistent, and therefore are available at a variety of resolutions that correspond to the footprint sizes of the observations such as 56 km, 38 km, 24 km, 21 km, 12 km, and 5.4 km, respectively. Each swath is packaged with associated geolocation fields. Data are stored in Hierarchical Data Format - Earth Observing System (HDF-EOS) format and are available from 19 June 2002 to 3 October 2011 via FTP.

Version Description

For details regarding the processing and algorithm history for all versions of AMSR-E data sets, refer to the AMSR-E Data Versions Web page.

Product Summary

Platforms
Aqua
Instruments
AMSR-E
Spatial Extent

N: 89.24 S: -89.24 E: 180 W: -180

Location
GLOBAL
Coordinate System
CARTESIAN
Granule Spatial Representation
ORBIT
Temporal Extent
2002-06-18 to 2011-10-03
Temporal Resolution
50 Minute
Concept ID
C3363038773-NSIDC_CPRD
Data State
DEPRECATED
Number of Files/Granules
0
Processing Level
2A
Published
Science Keywords
Brightness Temperature

Citation

Citation is critically important for dataset documentation and discovery. This dataset is openly shared, without restriction, in accordance with the EOSDIS Data Use and Citation Guidance.

Copy Citation

Ashcroft, P., & Wentz, F. (2003). AMSR-E/Aqua L2A Global Swath Spatially-Resampled Brightness Temperatures, Version 2 [Data set]. NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center. https://doi.org/10.5067/AMSR-E/AE_L2A.002 Date Accessed: 2026-05-28

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