The "Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats" (TROPICS) mission has a goal of providing nearly all-weather observations of three-dimensional temperature and humidity, as well as cloud ice and precipitation horizontal structure, at high temporal resolution to conduct high-value science investigations of tropical cyclones. The mission comprises a constellation of five identical Space Vehicles (SVs) conforming to the 3U form factor and hosting a passive microwave spectrometer payload.
Each SV hosts an identical high-performance spectrometer named the TROPICS Millimeter-wave Sounder (TMS) that will provide temperature profiles using seven channels near the 118.75-GHz oxygen absorption line, water vapor profiles using three channels near the 183-GHz water vapor absorption line, imagery in a single channel near 90 GHz for precipitation measurements (when combined with higher resolution water vapor channels), and a single channel near 205 GHz that is more sensitive to cloud-sized ice particles.
This dataset is the Level-2B Neural Network Atmospheric Vertical Profiles (NNAVP) – Neural Network vertical profile retrieval approach for temperature profiles in Kelvin (K) and water vapor mixing ratio profiles in (kg/kg). Retrievals are done in all non and precipitating conditions, over both land and ocean. Temperature profiles go from surface to 20 km and water profiles from surface to 10-km. The geophysical retrieval of atmospheric vertical temperature is at the larger unified F-band spatial resolution while the retrieval of vertical moisture is at the finer G-band spatial resolution. Each TROPICS netCDF file contains a granule of data with 81 spots and approximately 2880 scans, where a granule is defined as an orbit's worth of data.