Aqua/AMSR-E L2 AMSR2 Format Precipitation

However, the AMSR-E reached its limit to maintain the antenna rotation speed necessary for slow rotation mode and it automatically halted its observation and rotation on December 4, 2015.Level 2 product stores the Geophysical quantity from the brightness temperature of level 1 product.This product includes Precipitation (PRC). 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/hr.Also, the quality flag for each observation point (Pixel Data Quality) is stored.The provided format is HDF5. Spatial resolution is 10 km.

The current version of the product is "Version 8". The generation unit is scene (defined as a half orbit).