AIRS - the atmospheric infrared sounder

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) was launched in 2002, along with two companion microwave sounders. This AIRS sounding suite is the most advanced atmospheric sounding system to date, with measurement accuracies far surpassing those of current weather satellites. From its Sun synchronous polar orbit, the AIRS system provides more than 300,000 all-weather soundings covering more than 90% of the globe every 24 hours. Much of the post-launch period has been devoted to optimizing the "retrieval" system used to derive atmospheric and other parameters from the observations and to validate those parameters. The geophysical parameters have been produced since the beginning of 2003 - the first data were released to the public in mid-2003, and future improved versions be released periodically. The ongoing calibration/validation effort has confirmed that the system is very accurate and stable. There are a number of applications for the AIRS products, ranging from numerical weather prediction - where positive impact on forecast accuracy has already been demonstrated, to atmospheric research - where the AIRS water vapor products near the surface and in the mid and upper troposphere promise to make it possible to characterize and model phenomena that are key for atmospheric processes, from weather patterns to long-term phenomena, such as interannual variability and climate change.