The objective of this limited edition data collection is to examine products generated by the Climate Heritage AIRS Retrieval Technique (CHART) algorithm to analyze Cross-track Infrared Sounder/Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (CrIS/ATMS) instruments, also known as CrIMSS (Cross-track Infrared and Microwave Sounding Suite). The CrIS/ATMS instruments used for this product are on board the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) platform and use the Normal Spectral Resolution (NSR) data. The CrIS instrument is a Fourier transform spectrometer with a total of 1305 NSR infrared sounding channels covering the longwave (655-1095 cm-1), midwave (1210-1750 cm-1), and shortwave (2155-2550 cm-1) spectral regions. The ATMS instrument is a cross-track scanner with 22 channels in spectral bands from 23 GHz through 183 GHz.

The CHART algorithm is uses the basic cloud clearing and retrieval methodologies used including the definition and derivation of Jacobians, the channel noise covariance matrix, and the use of constraints including the background term, are essentially identical to those of AIRS Version-6.6 and previous AIRS Science Team retrieval algorithms. As with the Version-6.6 AIRS system, the CHART algorithm uses a Neural Network system as an initial guess. The sounding retrieval methodology characterizes the full atmospheric state and the retrievals contains a variety of geophysical parameters derived from the CrIMSS data.

Cloud clearing is the process of computing the clear column radiance for a given channel n, and represents what the channel would have observed if the entire scene were cloud free. The entire scene is defined as the ATMS field of regard (FOR) which includes and array of 3x3 CrIS field of views (FOV). The basic assumption of cloud-clearing is that if the observed radiances in each field-of-view are different, the differences in the observed radiances are solely attributed to the differences in the fractional cloudiness in each field of view while everything else (surface properties and atmospheric state) is uniform across the field of regard.

The CHART system was designed to serve as a seamless follow on to the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder/Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AIRS/AMSU) instrument processing system. For comparison, the AIRS/AMSU data collection AIRI2CCR contains similar meteorological information to this CHART data collection and the CLIMCAPS (Community Long-term Infrared Microwave Coupled Product System) data collection SNDRSNIML2CCPCCRN contains CRIMSS data processed with an analogous algorithm. A level 2 granule has been set as 6 minutes of data, 30 footprints cross track by 45 lines along track. There are 240 granules per day, with an orbit repeat cycle of approximately 16 day.