Thispage is intended to link to documentation that addresses general charactristics of missions and instruments of the A-Train formation. The documents below address either Instruments characteristics, or calibrated radiances, all of which is critical for the correct understanding of instruments operation and science retrievals.
However, we are not an archive for all data from all A-Train instruments. It would not be possible to shortcut from here to all data and supporting documentation either. Users are encouraged instead to navigate to the science teams home sites that we summarize in our Missions section. Frequently, science teams post news on algorithms developments that Users otherwise may miss. Further, they have obvious links to all relevant data publicly available.
For the Data Products stored in, and distributed from, ATDD please, navigate through "Data Products".
General A-Train Documents
About A-Train from LARC A nice summary, put together by the NASA Langley Research Center (LARC). This is a short and concise outline of basic characteristics of A-Train platforms and instruments. |
A-Train reconfiguration The A-Train formation was reconfigured in 2008. An important element was the Aura platform re-phasing that in fact started in late 2007 and finalized in May 2008. A profound effect it had is on the location of the ground tracks of all Aura sensors relative to the rest of the formation. |
| A detailed graphical description of MODIS/Aqua, AIRS, CloudSat and MLS fields of view (FOV), their scales, relative location, equatorial crossing time of their FOV , etc. |
MODIS Documents
MODIS L1B file specs and Users Guide This page from the MODIS Characterization Support Team (MCST),has more than that, but the User guide and the L1B and geolocations file specs are particularly valuable. Advanced users who seek to produce their own L1B (e.g. Direct Broadcast) will find the LUT here. MODIS Earth Location A detailed document covering instrument geolocation algorithm, bow-tie effect, detectors layout, visible bands aggregation, accuracy estimates, etc. For advanced users for whom nderstanding of geometry of observation is critical. |
CloudSat Documents
Aura Documents
Atmos Composition
