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2622422 
Journal Article 
The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on the NASA Aqua Spacecraft: a general remote sensing tool for understanding atmospheric structure, dynamics and composition 
Pagano, TS; Chahine, MT; Fetzer, EJ 
2010 
Unk 
Proceedings of SPIE
ISSN: 0277-786X
EISSN: 1996-756X 
Proceedings of SPIE 
7827 
WOS:000287757200009 
The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on the EOS Aqua Spacecraft was launched on May 4, 2002. Early in the mission, the AIRS instrument demonstrated its value to the weather forecasting community with better than 6 hours of improvement on the 5 day forecast. Now with over eight years of consistent and stable data from AIRS, scientists are able to examine processes governing weather and climate and look at seasonal and interannual trends from the AIRS data with high statistical confidence. Naturally, long-term climate trends require a longer data set, but indications are that the Aqua spacecraft and the AIRS instrument should last beyond 2018. This paper briefly describes the AIRS data products and presents some of the most significant findings involving the use of AIRS data in the areas of weather forecast improvement, climate processes and model validation, cloud and polar processes, and atmospheric composition (chemistry and dust). 
Atmosphere; Sounding; AIRS; Aqua; Weather; Climate; Temperature; Water Vapor