NOAA Climate Data Record of Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) and Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU-A) Mean Layer Temperature, Version 3.0

The dataset contains three channel-based, monthly gridded atmospheric layer temperature Climate Data Records generated by merging nine MSU NOAA polar orbiting satellites, TIROS-N and NOAA-6 through NOAA-14, and six AMSU-A polar orbiting satellites, NOAA-15 through NOAA-18, MetOp-A, and NASA AQUA. These are temperatures of middle-troposphere (TMT), upper-troposphere (TUT, also known as temperature troposphere stratosphere), and lower-stratosphere (TLS), corresponding to measurements from MSU/AMSU-A channels 2/5, 3/7, and 4/9, respectively. Adjustments of observations included limb-adjustment, diurnal drift corrections, warm target temperature effect, and residual inter-satellite bias removal. Data coverage is from November 1978 to present; It is monthly global gridded dataset with 2.5 latitude by 2.5 longitude resolution. The dataset is updated each month with full Period of Record (POR) files in order to monitor operationally the change of upper air temperature.