Regridded Brightness Temperature

Summary

The L1C-TCR product contains the measured and intercalibrated brightness temperatures that are resampled to a spatially uniform grid in the along- and across-track directions. The spacing of this grid (in both directions) is defined by the spacing between scans on the ground, which is around 14.2 km for the TMS orbit and scan rate. One effect of this resampling is to remove variability in the scan angle at a given spot number, as this product is intended for imagery and image-based machine learning applications that expect data on a spatially uniform grid.

Product Information

The L1C-TCR datasets are stored as netCDF4 files. The filename is the following format:

TMS[satellite number].1C-TCR.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 (V00-03) L1C-TCR data product maturity is beta. The intercalibration to a reference instrument is based on pre-launch simulations and has not been validated. Once accuracy requirements have been verified, the product status will be considered validated (major version number >= 1).