Introduction

The Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI) is a two band BOMEM-100 Michelson interferometer consisting of two detectors (5-20 um and 3-5 um), scene imaging scan mirror, and a two point calibration system. Every ten minutes a spectrum at one wavenumber resolution is produced from 3-20 um with an absolute accuracy of 10f ambient radiance determined by intercomparisons between other AERI instrument and a NIST blackbody reference.  AERI measured atmospheric radiances can be used to retrieve:

• temperature and water vapor profiles within the atmospheric boundary layer
• sea surface temperature/emissivities
• cloud properties
• land emissivity
• trace gas amounts

AERI radiances have several useful scientific purposes for the study of the atmosphere. Firstly AERI provides absolutely calibrated radiances which can be used for forward calculation comparisons of radiosonde and LIDAR profiles. This provides a reference to the airborne and ground based remote sensing instruments used in CAMEX-3, which profile atmospheric state. Secondly AERI radiances contain valuable temperature and water vapor information which can be used to retrieve planetary boundary layer thermodynamics.

Principles of operation

This information is found on the AERI Engineering page.  

Data Naming Conventions and Data Format

AERI data are located in three directories: aerirad, aerigoes and aerisonde.

aerirad

Datafiles are in netcdf format of the form 98ddd_aeri_c#.cdf, where ddd is the day of the year and # is either 1 or 2 depending on the particular interferometer from which data were collected.

Browse files are in gif format and are of the form 98ddd_aeri_sum.gif. They show AERI radiance summaries.  

aerigoes

Datafiles in nedcdf format with filenames of the form 98dddAG.cdf.

Browse files are in gif format and are of the form 98ddd_aeri-goes.gif. They show time series of mixing ratio and potential temperature derived using AERI measurements and GOES soundings.

aerisonde

Datafiles are in ascii and netcdf format with filenames of the form 98ddd_tttt_uwsonde.txt or .cdf where tttt is the sonde launch time in UCT.

Browse files are in gif format and are of the form 98ddd_tttt_uw_sonde.gif.

AERI radiance, retrieval and sounding data are stored in netcdf (.cdf) format. Libraries to read this format from Unidata are available for Fortran and C. This format can easily be read in both IDL and Matlab.

Additionally, all of the images: radiance (as in aerirad/browse above), mixing ratio/potential temperature (in the aerigoes/data directory) and the skew-T log P diagrams (in aerisonde) are available on line at: https://camex.nsstc.nasa.gov/camex3/cmx3aeri/

Other Andros Island Sonde Data

There was another rawinsonde dataset collected at Andros Island during the CAMEX-3 campaign. Collected by the Wallops Island Test Group, it is contained in the dataset CAMEX-3 Andros Island Radiosonde/Rawindsonde Data. Order by contacting GHRC User Services.

Selected References

The AERI instrument and software has several references available. The most pertinent to the temperature and moisture retrieval algorithm are:

Feltz, W. F., W. L. Smith, R. O. Knuteson, H. R. Revercomb, H. B. Howell, Harold H. Woolf, 1998: Meteorological Applications of Temperature and Water Vapor Retrievals from the Ground-Based Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI). Jour. Appl. Meteor., 37, 857-875.

Smith, W. L., W. F. Feltz, R. O. Knuteson, H. R. Revercomb, H. B. Howell, Harold H. Woolf, 1998: The Retrieval of Planetary Boundary Layer Structure Using Ground Based Infrared Spectral Radiance Measurements. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 16, 323-333.

Contact Information

To order these data or for further information, please contact: