The NOAA/NASA Pathfinder Program Special
Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) Level 3 Equal Area Scalable
Earth-Grid (EASE-Grid) Brightness Temperatures consist of gridded
data in one of three projections: Northern Hemisphere, Southern
Hemisphere and full global. The data gridding technique maximizes
the radiometric integrity of the original brightness temperature
values, maintains high spatial and temporal precision, and involves
no averaging of original swath data.
Coverage is global and begins 1 August 1987;
processing is ongoing (please review temporal coverage for current
availability). Resolution is 25 km for all channels and 12.5 km for
the 85 GHz channels. There are 18 brightness temperature files per
day for a given projection, and two corresponding time files. Data
are contained in flat binary files, either one grid per file
consisting of 2-byte integer arrays of brightness temperatures in
tenths of Kelvins, or in the case of time files, 1-byte integer
arrays consisting of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) in tenths of
hours.
