(A)ATSR Multimission Archive

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Introduction

A major activity is currently underway at the NERC Earth Observation Data Centre (NEODC) at RAL to produce a 15-year archive of high-quality sea-surface temperature and image products from the (A)ATSR series of instruments in a common format.

Using a conversion tool produced at RAL, the entire dataset of ATSR-1 and -2 UBT products has been processed to produce ENVISAT-compatible Level 1b, Level 2 and METEO products, which populate the archive alongside the equivalent set of products from AATSR. The dataset is now part of the NEODC archive, with L1b and L2 products from all 3 missions already available in ENVISAT format. AATSR-format outputs of this project have been duplicated to ESA for inclusion in its own archive which will serve the international community. The project is a joint venture involving ESA, the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and STFC/RAL.

The Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR) was built by Astrium, subsequently calibrated and characterised at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and continues the ATSR-1 and ATSR-2 mission data sets of precise sea surface temperature (SST), thereby ensuring the production of a 15 year near-continuous data set from the ERS-1, ERS-2 and ENVISAT missions at the levels of accuracy of 0.3 K or better for climate research. AATSR was launched on board the Envisat satellite on 1st March 2002. ATSR-1 and 2 are described in more detail on the ATSR-1/2 fact sheet. For more details on Envisat and its other instruments see the Envisat fact sheet.

AATSR has the same signal channels and embodies exactly the same viewing principle as ATSR-2. These are: thermal channels at 3.7, 10.8, and 12 microns wavelength; and reflected visible/near infrared channels at 0.555, 0.659, 0.865, and 1.61 microns wavelength. Like its predecessors, ATSR-1 and ATSR-2, AATSR has on-board calibration systems for the thermal channels, using two black bodies, viewed every scan, and for the visible channel a sample of solar radiation scattered from a diffuser plate is viewed once per orbit. Unlike ATSR-2 it maintains full digitisation of all channels all the time and has no limited-data-rate operating modes.

For the latest information see http://envisat.esa.int/.

Fig. 1 Flight model of AATSR. Image from http://envisat.esa.int

For more details about AATSR see http://www.atsr.rl.ac.uk/ and http://envisat.esa.int/instruments/tour-index/aatsr/.

Platform Parameters

Data availability

NEODC

Availability fof (A)ATSR products in the NEODC (A)ATSR archive is shown in the table below. Click the link foreach mission to browse products in the archive and (if authorised) download via HTTP. The same directory structure is also available via ftp at ftp.neodc.rl.ac.uk starting with drectory /neodc/aatsr_multimission/.