RAL Infrared Microwave Sounder (IMS) temperature, water vapour, ozone and surface spectral emissivity

The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) Infrared Microwave Sounder (IMS) data set contains vertical profiles of temperature, water vapour, and ozone as well as surface spectral emissivity spanning infrared and microwave, surface temperature, cloud fraction and height. Data are retrieved from co-located measurements by the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI), the Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS) and the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) on board the Eumetsat Metop satellites.

Development of the IMS scheme and data production were 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.

Data were produced by the Remote Sensing Group (RSG) at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL).

This first public release consists of a full processing of the Metop A mission from 2007 to the end of 2016, using version 2.1 of the algorithm.

IMS data are produced with the horizontal sampling of IASI, ~25 x 25 km