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NOAA Climate Data Record (CDR) of MSU Level 1c Brightness Temperature, Version 1.0

Published by NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce | Metadata Last Checked: February 10, 2026 | Last Modified: 2013-08-01T00:00:00.000+00:00
This dataset contains Level 1c inter-calibrated brightness temperatures from the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) sensors onboard nine polar orbiting satellites (TIROS-N, NOAA-6, -7, -8, -9, -10, -11, -12, and -14) spanning from 1978 to 2006. The dataset was produced by the NOAA Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR), and is a Fundamental Climate Data Record (FCDR) of microwave brightness temperatures in the NOAA CDR Program. MSU is a four-channel microwave radiometer measuring at 50.3, 53.74, 54.96, and 57.95 GHz, and has ground spatial resolution of about 250 km in diameter at nadir. The native MSU Level 1b data were inter-calibrated using the Integrated Microwave Inter-Calibration Approach (IMICA) method to obtain a long-term data product to be used in climate analyses. For comparison, data files also include the operational data used in NWP forecasting along with the IMICA calibrated radiances, which minimize or remove the biases found in the operational calibration. In addition, limb adjusted radiances for both the IMICA and operational calibrations are included for certain type of climate applications, such as atmospheric layer temperature development using the radiance datasets. The orbital swath data files include MSU channels 2 through 4 for the IMICA calibration, and channels 1 through 4 for the operational calibration. The inter-calibrated MSU data are not expected to change for the dataset time period.

Resources

13 resources available

  • NCEI Dataset Landing Page

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  • NCEI Direct Download

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  • NCEI THREDDS Catalog

    FILE
  • NCEI Archive Information Request System (AIRS)

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  • MSU Brightness Temperature - NOAA

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  • Registry of Open Data on AWS

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  • AWS S3 Explorer (Region: us-east-1)

    FILE
  • Azure Landing Page (Region: us-east)

    FILE
  • DSMR Publication at the NOAA Institutional Repository

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  • NCEI landing page for AMSU Brightness Temperature - NOAA

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  • Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Keywords

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  • NOAA Climate Data Record Program

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  • NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)

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