ADEOS-II/AMSR L2 Amount of Precipitation dataset is obtained from the AMSR sensor onboard ADEOS-II and produced by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).The Advanced Earth Observing Satellite-II (ADEOS-II) was launched on December 14, 2002 (Japanese Standard Time). The objective of ADEOS-II was to acquire data to contribute to international global climate change research, as well as for applications such as meteorology and fishery. ADEOS-II operation on orbit was given up on October 31 2003, because sufficient electric power was not available to maintain operation of the satellite.AMSR observes various physical contents concerning to water (H2O) by receiving weak microwaves naturally radiated from the Earth's surface and atmosphere and also regardless of day or night, the presence of clouds. Those sensors aim at collecting global data for mainly understanding the circulation of water and energy. Level 2 product stores the Geophysical quantity from the brightness temperature of level 1 product. This product includes Amount of Precipitation. Combinations of both emission and scattering signatures are used in retrieval algorithm. The algorithm retrieves rainfall over ocean and land areas except for the following surfaces: coastal (~25 km from coastal line), sea ice, snow-covered land, and desert areas. Separate algorithms are applied for over ocean and over land regions. Generally, retrievals over ocean have better quality than those over land. The sea ice flag is based on sea ice concentration retrievals from AMSR provided by the EOC integrated retrieval system. Snow-covered land and desert surface detection is based on AMSR brightness temperatures and embedded in the precipitation retrieval algorithm. The physical quantity unit is mm/h.The provided format is HDF4. The current version of the product is "Version 3". The generation unit is scene(defined as a half orbit).
JP/JAXA/SAOC
ADEOS-II/AMSR L2 Amount of Precipitation