Nimbus Overview

Welcome to the Nimbus data support web site located at the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC). The GES DISC provides end-to-end support for some public data products from the Nimbus program.

The Nimbus program was initiated in early 1960's to develop NASA's “second generation” of meteorological satellites. The objectives of the program were to develop advanced passive radiometer and spectrometer sensors to study the atmosphere and ocean and to evaluate new active and passive sensors.

Some of the major successes and contributions of the Nimbus program to the field of meteorology were to provide:

• high resolution global television cloud and storm mapping photography

• high resolution infrared pictures for nighttime cloud mapping, and cloud top temperature

• quantitative measurements of atmospheric structures

Following is a list of Nimbus products that were restored from tapes and stored at the GSFC DISC:

• Nimbus I High Resolution Infrared Radiometer (HRIR) (3.5 to 4.1 micron window)
  
• Nimbus II Medium Resolution Infrared Radiometer (MRIR) (4.6-6.9 micron, 10-11 micron, 14-16 micron, 5-30 micron, 0.2-4.0 micron)

• Nimbus II High Resolution Infrared Radiometer (HRIR) (3.5 to 4.1 micron)

• Nimbus III single-channel dual band-pass High Resolution Infrared Radiometer (HRIR) (3.4 – 4.2 micron at nighttime, 0.7-1.3 micron at daytime)
• Nimbus III Medium Resolution Infrared Radiometer (MRIR) (4.5-7.0 micron, 10-11 micron, 14.5-15.5 micron, 20-23 micron, 0.2-4.0 micron)

• Nimbus IV Temperature and Humidity Infrared Radiometer (THIR) at 11.5 micron channel

• Nimbus IV Temperature and Humidity Infrared Radiometer (THIR) at 6.7 micron channel

 
Nimbus film data was also recovered and has been stored at the GSFC DISC.

Nimbus restored tapes were stored to files on hard disks in a TAP format. No changes or conversion were applied to the Nimbus products and consequently the data records are still stored in an IBM 36 bit binary format. In order to emulate a tape, TAP headers specifying the previous and following record lengths were added before and after each data record. The tape format and data structures are described in details in the README of each product.

You may download the Nimbus data products by selecting the "Data Holding" link on the menu bar. If you have questions on GES DISC data product support and services for the Nimbus and related data sets, please let us know.