Providing Gridded Atmospheric Radiance Products and Services from MODIS and AIRS Instruments on NASA´s Aqua Satellite

Atmospheric temperature and moisture profile sounding data spanning more than three decades comprise one of the longest continuous US polar orbiting satellite data records available today. NASA´s Aqua satellite launched on May 4, 2002 carries two well calibrated independent IR grating spectrometers, AIRS and MODIS. Both AIRS and MODIS have been used for extensive research and are truly flagship instruments for the Earth Science community, but neither offers an operational product with gridded calibrated radiances. Radiance data are very useful and have been used for operational weather forecasting models, and to determine observed global trends in temperature, ozone, albedo, desertification, aerosols, etc. The radiances are only available in their native orbital swath form at full resolution that can be awkward and bulky to work with. Their co-location on Aqua provides a unique opportunity for common observation of the same air mass with two different instruments over a long time period.