Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

Polar Radiant Energy in the Far InfraRed Experiment (PREFIRE) Cloud Properties from PREFIRE Satellite 1 R01

Metadata Updated: November 14, 2025

Polar Radiant Energy in the Far InfraRed Experiment (PREFIRE) Satellite 1 Cloud Properties (PREFIRE_SAT1_2B-CLD) contains cloud properties derived from data collected by the PREFIRE Thermal Infrared Spectrometer (TIRS-PREFIRE) aboard PREFIRE-SAT1. Dual CubeSats each carry a PREFIRE Thermal Infrared Spectrometer (TIRS-PREFIRE), a push broom spectrometer with 63 channels measuring mid- and far-infrared (FIR) radiation from approximately 5 to 53 µm. Most polar emissions are in the FIR but have not been measured on a large scale. PREFIRE aims to fill knowledge gaps in the global energy budget by more accurately characterizing polar emissions. This information will then be assimilated into global circulation and other models to predict future conditions more accurately.PREFIRE_SAT1_2B-CLD contains cloud top pressure, cloud optical depth, and cloud particle diameter as derived from PREFIRE Spectral Radiance (PREFIRE_SAT1_1B-RAD) data using an Optimal Estimation retrieval via a radiative transfer model with inputs from PREFIRE_SAT1_2B-MSK (cloud mask) and PREFIRE_SAT1_AUX-MET (Auxiliary Meteorlogy). The primary purpose of PREFIRE_SAT1_2B-CLD is to provide cloud properties information for the PREFIRE_SAT1_2B-FLX (spectral flux) product, which requires only enough accuracy for a coarse look-up table. This data collection is not suitable for an analysis of specific cloud properties.Science data retrieval started July 24, 2024 and is ongoing. Geographic coverage is global, with the greatest concentration of data in the polar regions. Within the orbital swath there are eight distinct tracks of data associated with the eight separate spatial scenes for each PREFIRE-TIRS. At the beginning of the mission, the approximate scene footprint sizes were 11.8 km x 34.8 km (cross-track x along-track), with gaps between each scene of approximately 24.2 km. The entire swath was ~264 km across. Note that the scene footprint and swath sizes quoted here are for the orbit altitude soon after launch. However, the footprint size will slowly become smaller as the orbit altitude decreases with time. This data has a temporal resolution of 0.707 seconds and is available in netCDF-4.The cloud properties data for the sister instrument aboard PREFIRE-SAT2 can be found in the PREFIRE_SAT2_2B-CLD collection.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date June 2, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 14, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date June 2, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 14, 2025
Publisher NASA/LARC/SD/ASDC
Maintainer
Identifier 10.5067/PREFIRE-SAT1/PREFIRE/CLD_L2B.R01
Data Last Modified 2025-09-11
Category Earth Science
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 559dec70-0aa6-463b-8175-b6abefa3aa5e
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://asdc.larc.nasa.gov/static/images/project_logos/prefire.png
Old Spatial "GEODETIC",{"NorthBoundingCoordinate":84,"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180,"EastBoundingCoordinate":180,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":-84}
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 09df7c28d336c5e2bd1d8d77852ac9d177ff763f49b30870a6b63dce2b415c4a
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial
Temporal 2024-07-24/2024-07-24

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.