Resampled Brightness Temperature

Summary

L1B-TBR can be thought of as a lightweight alternative to L1B-TB. The primary differences are that the brightness temperatures have been resampled to the channel 11 geolocation. The use of a common geolocation removes the channel dimension from the geolocation and scan geometry variables in the L1B-TBR files. Thus, the file size is approximately 20% of the corresponding L1B-TB file.

Product Information

The L1B-TBR datasets are stored as netCDF4 files. The filename is the following format:

TMS[satellite number].1B-TBR.V[major version]–[minor version].[stream].ST[start time of dataset].ET[end time of dataset].CT[creation time of dataset].nc

These come in two streams: 

• Near-real-time (NRT): These files are generated as soon as TMS data is received at a ground station, and are separated into distinct granules that are separated by spacecraft maneuvers, transmit events, or other data gaps between valid science observations. A granule may be as little as 128 scans (about 4 minutes) or as long as 512 scans (20 minutes). Typically, around 100 NRT granules are produced each day per satellite.
• Final processing (not yet available): These files are separated into orbits that begin at each ascending equator crossing. These contain all data that was collected during the orbit, with flags for the various events (e.g., maneuvers, transmit events) that can affect science data quality. Typically, 15-16 orbits each day are produced for each satellite.

The current (V00-06) L1B-TBR data product maturity is provisional. This is denoted by a major version number of 0. The geolocation and calibration have been assessed to be stable over 3+ weeks of observation, and an empirical antenna pattern correction and static bias correction has been applied to the brightness_temperature field. However, future refinement and modification of these fields is expected to occur over the next few months as additional and larger validation datasets are processed. Once accuracy requirements have been verified with these larger datasets, the product status will be considered validated (major version number >= 1).