Platform and Instrument Descriptions

AVHRR Leads-ARI Polar Gridded Brightness Temperatures

IMPORTANT NOTE: Data for 1992 are currently being reprocessed and will be available in the near future. Please contact NSIDC User Services for more information.

---

Summary

The AVHRR sensor is a broad-band, cross-track scanning instrument that senses in the visible, near-infrared and thermal infrared portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Depending on the model, the AVHRR is a four or five channel scanner. It has flown continuously on NOAA's Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites (POES) since 1978 and provides pole-to-pole on board collection of data from all channels. For a description of the Arctic Leads ARI project, please refer to the Project Description document. For a description of the data set, please refer to the Arctic Leads ARI data set documentation.

Table of Contents

The following instrument and platform descriptions are provided by other Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) as part of NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS).

Platform Description

In TIROS-N Source/Platform Document (NOAA POES), the NOAA Satellite Active Archive DAAC describes the NOAA Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites (POES) that carried the AVHRR instrument.

Instrument Descriptions

The Goddard Space Flight Center DAAC describes the AVHRR instrument in:

• the equipment section of the NOAA/NASA Pathfinder Data Set Guide Document for the AVHRR Land Data Sets

Additionally, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) describes the AVHRR instrument in the following:

• Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer document
• AVHRR Sensor Characteristics section of its Global Land 1-KM AVHRR Data Set Project Guide Document.

Document Information

Revision Date: 29 February 1996, 22 May 2003
Review Date: 31 August 1995
Curators: NSIDC Writers
Document ID: nsidc-0026
Document URL: http://nsidc.org/data/docs/daac/arctic_leads_ari_instrument.gd.html