This dataset provides monthly gridded (Level 3C) data from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) extended Infrared Microwave Sounder (IMS) retrieval scheme.

This scheme retrieves vertical profiles of temperature, water vapour (H2O), ozone (O3), carbon monoxide (CO), together with cloud optical depth and effective radius and column amounts 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 also retrieved: Nitric acid (HNO3), ammonia (NH3), sulfur dioxide (SO2), methanol (CH3OH), formic acid (HCOOH) and (for Suomi-NPP only) isoprene (C5H8).

In this dataset, the retrieval scheme has been applied to the infra-red and microwave sounders on the Metop-A satellite (IASI, AMSU and MHS).

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 was funded by NCEO. This version of the data was produced as part of the EOCIS project.
Data were produced by the Remote Sensing Group (RSG) at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL).”