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- Info
Glossary of Terms and Acronyms
- AMMR
-
Airborne Miltichannel Microwave Radiometer,
operates aboard mid altitude aircraft.
- AMMS
-
Advanced Microwave Moisture Sounder, operates
aboard high altitude aircraft.
- AMPR
-
Advanced Microwave Precipitation Radiometer,
operates aboard high altitude aircraft.
- API
- Application Programming Interface
- ARMAR
-
Airborne Rain Mapping Radar.
- Ascending Orbit (AM
Orbit)
- A polar orbit traversing from the south pole
to the north pole. For the NOAA sun synchronous
polar orbital satellites this orbit crosses the
equator during daylight hours.
- AVHRR
-
Advanced Very High-Resolution Radiometer.
- Browse Data
Product
-
Subsets of a larger data set, generated for the
purpose of allowing rapid interrogation (i.e.,
browse) of the larger data set by a potential
user.
- CAMEX
-
Convection and Moisture Experiment.
- CPI
-
Cloud Particle Imager.
- CD-ROM
-
Compact Disc Read-Only Memory.
- CLS
-
Cloud Lidar System.
- DAAC
-
Distributed Active Archive Center.
- Data
Set
-
A logically meaningful grouping or collection
of similar or related data.
- Data Set
Documentation
-
Information describing the characteristics of a
data set and its component granules, including
format, source instrumentation, calibration,
processing, algorithms, etc.
- dbZ
-
Radar reflectivity (unit of measurement).
- Descending Orbit (PM
Orbit)
- A polar orbit traversing from the north pole
to the south pole. For the NOAA sun synchronous
polar orbital satellites this orbit crosses the
equator during nightime hours.
- DISC
- Data Information and Services Center.
- DMSP
-
Defense Meteorological Satellite Program.
- ECMWF
-
European Centre for Medium-Range Weather
Forecasts.
- EDOP
-
ER-2 Doppler Radar.
- El nino
- This is the most important climate phenomenon
known on a multi-year time scale. The name El
Nino as been used by Peruvian fishermen for a
long time to identify a phenomenon of warming of
the ocean surface waters, often occurring at the
end of the year and lasting for several months
and which induces significant climactic change
over the entire world.
- EOS
- Earth Observing System
- EOSAP
-
Earth Observing System Amazon Project.
- EOSDIS
-
Earth Observing System Data and Information
System. This is the facility that will manage
the data resulting from NASA's Mission to
Planet Earth satellites and field measurement
programs, and other data essential for the
interpretation of these measurements.
- ESA
-
European Space Agency.
- ESMR
-
Electronically Scanned Microwave Radiometer.
- FNMOC
-
Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography
Center (Navy).
- FTP
-
File Transfer Protocol, a mechanism used to
transfer files from one system to another.
- GCM
- Global Circulation Model, a time evolving
simulation of the atmosphere using hydrodynamic
equations that incorporates satellite
measurements of the atmosphere with in-situ
measurements to constrain the model. It can be
used to interpolate between satellite and in-situ
measurements or to predict future states of the
atmosphere on a time scale of hours up to a few
days.
- GDS
-
GeoMet Data Services.
- GEWEX
-
Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment.
- GHz
-
Gigahertz.
- GMS
-
Geostationary Meteorological Satellite.
- GMT
-
Greenwich Mean Time.
- GOES
-
Geostationary Operational Environmental
Satellite.
- GPCC
-
Global Precipitation Climatology Center.
- GPCP
-
Global Precipitation Climatology Project.
- GPROF
-
Goddard Profiling Algorithm.
- Granule
-
The smallest aggregation of data that is
independently managed (i.e., described,
inventoried, retrievable).
- GSFC
-
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (Greenbelt,
MD).
- GOES
-
Geostationary Orbiting Earth Satellite.
- Guide
- A uniform set of detailed descriptions for
one or more data sets and related entities,
containing information suitable for determining
the location and content of each data set and its
potential usefulness for a specific
application.
- HDF
- Hierarchical Data Format.
- HDF-EOS
- Hierachical Data Format (HDF)-Earth Observing
System. An extention of the HDF, Version 4
developed at the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications.
- HIRS/2
- High Resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder 2.
The HIRS/2 instrument measures radiation emitted
by the Earth- atmosphere system in 19 regions of
the infrared spectrum between 3.7 and 15 microns.
A visible channel is also available to measure
the albedo of Earth's surface.
- HIS
-
High resolution Interferometer Sounder.
- HVPS
-
High Volume Precipitation Spectrometer.
- IEEE
- The Institute of Electronical and Electronics
Engineers, Inc
- IMS
-
Information Management System; in this context,
"IMS" refers to the EOSDIS Information
Management System used to access DAAC data.
- In-situ Measurements
- Measurements of a phenomena at the spatial
location where the phenomena is occurring such as
by a radiosonde or a ship as opposed to remotely
sensed data as by a satellite.
- IR
-
Infrared.
- kPa
-
Kilo-Pascals.
- KWAJEX
- Kwajalein Experiment, 1999 TRMM validation
experiment
- Landsat
-
Land Remote Sensing Satellite.
- LIP
-
Lightning Instrument Package.
- LIS
-
Lightning Imaging Sensor.
- MAS
-
MODIS Airborne Simulator, a 50-channel
spectro-radiometer mounted on NASA's high
altitude aricraft.
- METEOSAT
-
A geosynchronous meteorology satellite
(European Space Agency).
- MIR
- Millimeter Imaging Radiometer, a microwave
imager mounted on high altitude aircraft.
- MSFC
- NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
(Huntsville, Alabama).
- MSU
- The Microwave Sounding Unit instrument is a
four channel Dicke radiometer making passive
microwave radiation measurements in four regions
of the 50 GHz oxygen emission spectrum.
- NASA
-
National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
- NCSA
- National Center for Supercomputing
Applications
- NESDIS
-
National Environmental Satellite, Data, and
Information Service.
- NOAA
-
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration.
- NWS
-
National Weather Service.
- OLR
- Outgoing Longwave Radiation, energy radiated
away from the atmosphere to space, integated over
all frequencies in the earth's infrared spectrum
(generally 2 to 20 microns)
- Polar Orbit
- An orbit passing nearly over the poles.
- Radiosonde
- A device carried by a weather balloon that
measures atmospheric pressure, temperature, and
moisture and transmits the measurements by radio
to a ground station. There is a world wide
network of radiosondes providing atmospheric
measurements up to 4 times daily.
- Raw
Data
- Data in their original form as received from
the instrument.
- SCSMEX
- South China Sea Monsoon Experiment.
- SDS
- Scientific Data Set - A term used in the HDF
file formats.
- SMMR
-
Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer.
- Spatial Resolution
- the size of the smallest object recognizable
using the detector.
- SSM/I
-
Special Sensor Microwave/Imager.
- SSU
- Stratospheric Sounding Unit, a three channel
pressure modulated radiometer for sensing
radiances emitted from the stratospheric part of
the atmosphere.
- Sun Synchronous
- An orbit that passes over the equator at the
same local time each day.
- TDR
-
Temperature Data Record (synonymous with
Antenna Temperature).
- TEFLUN
-
Texas and Florida Underflights.
- Tg
-
Tera-grams.
- TOGA
-
Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere.
- TOGA/COARE
-
TOGA/Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response
Experiment.
- TOVS
- Tiros Operational Vertical Sounder, a suit of
three instruments that measures upwelling
radiation from the atmosphere from which surface
properties, clouds, and the vertical structure of
the atmosphere can be determined.
- TRMM
- Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission
(U.S.-Japan), satellite launched in 1997 to
measure rainfall in the global tropics.
- TRMM-LBA
-
TRMM-Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere
Experiment in Amazonia, 1999 TRMM validation
experiment.
- WetNet
-
Network for Distribution and Joint Analysis of
SSM/I Data.
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Atmos Composition
