The NASA Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC) is one of twelve NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Data Centers that provide Earth science data, information, and services to research scientists, applications scientists, applications users, and students. The GES DISC is the home (archive) of NASA Precipitation and Hydrology, as well as Atmospheric Composition and Dynamics remote sensing data and information. The DISC also houses the Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) data assimilation datasets (generated by GSFC’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office), and the North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS) and Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) data products (both generated by GSFC's Hydrological Sciences Branch).
This gridded merged multi-satellite geostationary infrared (IR) brightness temperature product originates from the NOAA Climate Prediction Center (CPC), the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), and the National Weather Service (NWS) and are hosted by NASA’s Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC).
The Level 1B algorithm and software transform Level 0 counts into geolocated and calibrated antenna temperatures (Ta) and brightness temperatures (Tb).
The 2A GPROF and 2A PRPS algorithms estimate precipitation rate from single orbits brightness temperature data from passive-microwave radiometers. The algorithms also uses ancillary information about Earth’s atmosphere and surface.
The Level 1C algorithms calculate calibrated brightness temperature values so that the brightness temperature form an individual sensor is consistent with the brightness temperature from other passive-microwave sensors. Currently, the GPM Microwave Imager (GMI) is the reference instrument for calibrating the other sensors. The 1C data product is the lowest level passive-microwave data product that most researchers are interested in examining, although some instruments have more primitive data products available from the GPM project.
