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TES Data and Information

 Image represents the TES project.

The Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) launched into sun-synchronous orbit aboard Aura, the third of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) spacecraft, on July 15, 2004. The primary objective of TES is to make global, three-dimensional measurements of ozone and other chemical species involved in its formation and destruction.

TES is a high-resolution imaging infrared Fourier-transform spectrometer that operates in both nadir and limb-sounding modes. TES global survey standard products include profile measurements of ozone, water vapor, carbon monoxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide, and nitric acid for 16 orbits every other day. TES Special Observations are research measurements of targeted locations or regional transects which are used to observe specific phenomena or to support local or aircraft validation campaigns.

The TES Level 1B products are written in NCSA's HDF5 format. The Level 2 and Level 3 data products are written in HDF-EOS5 (based on HDF5) format.

Notes:
Updated Dec 23, 2009

  • TES instrument operations are temporally suspended following the collection of Global Survey 11015 on December 20, 2009. The TES PCS (Pointing Control Subsystem) is indicating an error condition impacting Scan 2 (the first nadir scan) starting with Global Survey 11006 on December 14, 2009. The TES team is investigating the issue and hopes to be back in operation in January 2010. The impacted Global Surveys will be delivered to archive with problem scans removed from the data product.

  • TES Special Observation Transect Data:
    • A problem with TES instrument pointing during scan 0 was found in TES transect data. This scan was removed from the Version 4 Level 2 data sets; use of data sets prior to Version 4 should ignore scan 0.
    • Transect data sets impacted are generated from Macro 39 and range in date from January 2006 to the present. The Macro ID is contained within the dataset under HDFEOS/ADDITIONAL/FILE_ATTRIBUTES/Command_Seq_ID.

  • Version 4 data contains an update to Ozone profiles with surface pressure larger than 1030 hPa. This condition of surface pressure occurs in approximately 1.5% of target scenes processed thus far. While data products produced prior to Version 4 will not contain this update, target scenes may be identified in the TES O3 HDF product files through the data field Pressure; those target scenes indicating a non-fill Pressure of greater than 1030 hPa should be ignored. The targets with this error can also be identified by the presence of negative AveragingKernelDiagonal values (< -0.01).

  • Beginning July 30, 2008, TES Global Survey observations are restricted to between +70 to -50 degrees latitude, corresponding to Run 8187 and greater.
  • From June 6 to July 29, 2008, TES Global Survey observations are eliminated below -60 degrees latitude, corresponding to Run 7370 to 8149.
  • Due to instrument life-time concerns, the acquisition of TES limb data was suspended during nominal Global Survey operations following April 10, 2005 (Runs greater than 2861).

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Available Data Products
Product Description
Level 3 Daily Products Retrieved species (CH4, CO, H2O, HDO, HNO3, O3) volume mixing ratio or temperature data from a Level 2 Global Survey run interpolated onto a uniform global latitude/longitude grid at selected pressure levels.
Each Level 3 file has an associated browse product file which contains Level 2 and Level 3 images.
Level 3 Monthly Products Retrieved species (CH4, CO, H2O, HDO, HNO3, O3) volume mixing ratio or temperature data for Global Surveys initiated within a month interpolated onto a uniform global latitude/longitude grid at selected pressure levels.
Each Level 3 file has an associated browse product file which contains Level 2 and Level 3 images.
Level 2 Global Survey Standard Products Retrieved species (CH4, CO, H2O, HDO, HNO3, O3) volume mixing ratio or temperature profiles at the observation targets and the estimated errors for a global survey of up to 16 orbits.
Level 2 Special Observation Products Retrieved species (CH4, CO, H2O, HDO, HNO3, O3) volume mixing ratio or temperature profiles and the estimated errors for research observations.
Level 1B Standard Products Radiometric calibrated spectral radiances and their corresponding noise equivalent spectral radiances (NESR) for a single TES orbit.
Level 1B Special Observation Products Radiometric calibrated spectral radiances and their corresponding noise equivalent spectral radiances (NESR) for research observations.

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