The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) extended Infrared Microwave Sounder (IMS) data set retrieves vertical profiles of temperature, water vapour (H2O), ozone (O3), carbon monoxide (CO), together with cloud optical depth and effective radius and column amounds of minor gases, dust and sulfuric acid aerosol optical depth. The scheme also provides surface temperature and surface spectral emissivity spanning infrared and microwave.

Column amounts of the following minor gases are retrieved: Nitric acid (HNO3), ammonia (NH3), sulfur dioxide (SO2), methanol (CH3OH), formic acid (HCOOH) and (for Suomi-NPP only) isoprene (C5H8).

The retrieval scheme has been applied to the infra-red and microwave sounders on platforms Metop (IASI, AMSU and MHS) and Suomi-NPP (CrIS and ATMS). The data sub-set provided here comprises four months (April, July, September, December) of Suomi-NPP data in 2018 produced with the horizontal sampling of CrIS, ~18x18 km.

Development of the core IMS scheme was funded by the UK’s National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO) under the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), with additional funding from EUMETSAT contract EUM/CO/13/4600001252/THH. Development of the extended IMS scheme and production of this Suomi-NPP data sub-set were funded through NCEO. Data were produced by the Remote Sensing Group (RSG) at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL).”