Nimbus-7 SMMR Antenna Temperatures, Version 1

The SMMR Antenna Temperatures (Nimbus-7) data set consists of antenna temperatures from passive microwave radiometers aboard NOAA's Nimbus-7 satellite. The instrument is the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR). Each file consists of one days worth of data in swath format, i.e. the portion of the Earth's surface viewed by the scanning radiometer. Antenna temperature data are available from NSIDC from October 1978 to August 1987. SMMR was a ten channel passive microwave instrument using six conventional Dicke-type radiometers. It delivered orthogonally polarized antenna temperature data at five frequencies: 6.6, 10.69, 18.0 21.0 and 37.0 GHz. The two 37.0 GHz radiometers operated continuously for each polarization. The other radiometers alternated polarizations on alternate scans. The size of each daily file is 35 MBytes. The data are distributed on FTP.

The scanner operated only on alternate days, due to spacecraft power limitations. There are typically at least 14 days of coverage per month, although major data gaps occur in August: in August, 1982, the 4th, 8th, and 16th are missing for both polar regions; in August, 1984, the 13th through the 23rd are missing for both polar regions.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Maintainer Earthdata Forum
Last Updated June 23, 2026, 03:12 (UTC)
Created April 1, 2025, 18:02 (UTC)
accessLevel public
bureauCode {026:00}
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
harvest_object_id b73a592e-d7f6-4176-9223-3490bd7e864d
harvest_source_id b99e41c6-fe79-4c19-bbc3-9b6c8111bfac
harvest_source_title Science Discovery Engine
identifier 10.5067/C8ZJDDHZAS59
license https://www.usa.gov/government-works
modified 2026-06-15T22:16:03Z
programCode {026:000}
publisher NASA NSIDC DAAC
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash 20b321c461a4a53d93e0252fcfe6af0cfd07a64033b767e532cf5b0cf792cb40
source_schema_version 1.1
spatial ["CARTESIAN", [{"WestBoundingCoordinate": -180.0, "NorthBoundingCoordinate": 84.0, "EastBoundingCoordinate": 180.0, "SouthBoundingCoordinate": -84.0}]]
temporal 1978-10-25/1987-08-20
theme {"Earth Science"}