| Instrument | Status/
Accuracy | Instrument Description | Measurement Technology | Timeline |
ACE-FTS
Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment (ACE) Fourier Transform Spectrometer | Operational
| Measure and understand the chemical processes that control the distribution of ozone in the Earth's atmosphere, especially at high altitudes. | Limb-scanning IR spectrometer |  |
AIRS
Atmospheric Infra-red Sounder | Operational
| High spectral resolution measurement of temperature and humidity profiles in the atmosphere. Long-wave Earth surface emissivity. Cloud diagnostics. Trace gas profiles. Surface temperatures. | Medium-resolution IR spectrometer | |
AMI
Advanced Meteorological Imager | Operational
| Continuous monitoring capability for the near real-time generation of high-resolution meteorological products and long-term change analysis of land/sea surface temperature and cloud coverage. | n/a | |
AMSU-A
Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-A | Operational
| All-weather night-day temperature sounding to an altitude of 45 km. | Absorption-band MW radiometer/spectrometer | |
AMSU-A
Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-A | Operational
| All-weather night-day temperature sounding to an altitude of 45 km. AMSU-A on Aqua is still partially operational, with 9 of the 15 channels working and collecting data. | Absorption-band MW radiometer/spectrometer | |
ASI
Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer | Operational
| Atmospheric sounding for weather forecasting. | n/a | |
ATMS
Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder | Operational
| Collects microwave radiance data that when combined with the CrIS data will permit calculation of atmospheric temperature and water vapour profiles. | Absorption-band MW radiometer/spectrometer | |
CrIS
Cross-track Infrared Sounder | Operational
| Daily measurements of vertical atmospheric distribution of temperature, moisture, and pressure. MWIR non-operational on Suomi NPP effective 12 July 2021. | Medium-resolution IR spectrometer | |
GIIRS
Geostationary Interferometric Infrared Sounder | Operational
| Measurements of three dimensional atmospheric structure. Large-area, continuous, fast, and accurate vertical air soundings of temperature and humidity. Subsequent units have slightly different specifications. | n/a | |
GNOS
GNSS Radio Occultation Sounder | Operational
| Atmospheric sounding for weather forecasting. | GNSS radio-occultation receiver | |
GNSS POD Receiver
Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) Precise Orbit Determination (POD) Receiver | Operational
| Precision orbit determination. | n/a | |
GNSS-RO Receiver
Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS)- Radio Occultation (RO) Receiver | Operational
| Measurement of bending angles of GNSS satellite signals occulted by Earth's atmosphere for retrieval of temperature and humidity profiles. | GNSS radio-occultation receiver | |
GPSRO (Terra-SAR)
GPS Radio Occultation System | Operational
| Measurements of atmospheric temperature, pressure and water vapour content. | GNSS radio-occultation receiver | |
GRAS
Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) Receiver for Atmospheric Sounding | Operational
| GNSS receiver for atmospheric temperature and humidity profile sounding. | GNSS radio-occultation receiver | |
HIRAS
Hyperspectral Infrared Atmospheric Sounder | Operational
| | n/a | |
HIRS/4
High Resolution Infra-red Sounder/4 | Operational
| Atmospheric temperature profiles and data on cloud parameters, humidity soundings, water vapour, total ozone content, and surface temperatures. Same as HIRS/3, with 10 km IFOV. | n/a | |
IASI
Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer | Operational
+/-1 degrees Kelvin | Measures tropospheric moisture and temperature, column integrated contents of ozone, carbon monoxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other minor gases which affect tropospheric chemistry. Also measures sea surface and land temperature. | Medium-resolution IR spectrometer | |
IKFS-2
IR-Fourier spectrometer | Operational
| Atmospheric temperature/humidity profiles, data on cloud parameters, water vapour & ozone column amounts, surface temperature. | n/a | |
IRAS
InfraRed Atmospheric Sounder | Operational
| Atmospheric sounding for weather forecasting. | n/a | |
MLS (EOS-Aura)
Microwave Limb Sounder (EOS-Aura) | Operational
| Measures lower stratospheric temperature and concentration of H2O, O3, ClO, HCl, OH, HNO3, N2O and SO2. | n/a | |
MODIS
MODerate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer | Operational
| Data on biological and physical processes on the surface of the Earth and in the lower atmosphere, and on global dynamics. Surface temperatures of land and ocean, chlorophyll fluorescence, land cover measurements, cloud cover (day and night). | n/a | |
MTVZA-GY
Scanning microwave imager-sounder | Operational
| Atmospheric temperature and humidity profiles, precipitation, sea-level wind speed, snow/ice coverage. | Absorption-band MW radiometer/spectrometer | |
MWHS-2
Improved MicroWave Humidity Sounder | Operational
| Meteorological applications. | Absorption-band MW radiometer/spectrometer | |
MWRI
Micro-Wave Radiation Imager | Operational
| All weather observations of precipitation, cloud features, vegetation, soil moisture sea ice, etc. | n/a | |
MWTS-2
Micro-Wave Temperature Sounder-2 | Operational
| Atmospheric sounding measurements. | Absorption-band MW radiometer/spectrometer | |
OSIRIS
Optical Spectrograph and Infra-Red Imaging System | Operational
| Detects aerosol layers and abundance of species such as O3, NO2, OClO, BrO and NO. Consists of spectrograph and IR imager. | n/a | |
SAGE-III
Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment | Operational
| Limb-viewing measurements of aerosol, O3, H20, NO2, OClO, NO3, temperature and pressure in the stratosphere, upper troposphere, and mesosphere using solar occultation, lunar occultation and limb scatter measurement techniques. | n/a | |
SMR
Submillimetre Radiometer | Operational
| Measures global distributions of ozone and species of importance for ozone chemistry ClO, HNO3, H2O, N2O, (HO2, H2O2). Measures temperature in the height range 15 - 100 km. | n/a | |
Sounder
Sounder | Operational
| Atmospheric soundings and data on atmospheric stability and thermal gradient winds. | n/a | |
Sounder (INSAT)
IR Sounder | Operational
| Atmospheric soundings, atmospheric stability, thermal gradient winds. | n/a | |
SSM/IS
Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder | Operational
| Measures thermal microwave radiation. Global measurements of air temp profile, humidity profile, ocean surface winds, rain overland/ocean, ice concentration/age, ice/snow edge, water vapour/clouds over ocean, snow water content, land surface temperature. | n/a | |
TGRS
TriG (Tri-GNSS) GNSS Radio-occultation System | Operational
| TGRS is the radio occultation receiver, which will receive signals from GPS, Galileo, and Glonass. | GNSS radio-occultation receiver | |
TOR
Tracking, Occultation and Ranging | Operational
| Consists of the dual-frequency GPS receiver IGOR (Integrated GPS Occultation Receiver) for evaluation of GPS-based orbit data as an independent tracking technique | GNSS radio-occultation receiver | |
TROPICS
Microwave Spectrometer (TROPICS) | Operational
+/-2 | Constellation to provide temperature/moisture sounding and cloud/precipitation imaging with rapid update. | Absorption-band MW radiometer/spectrometer | |
VISSR-2
Stretched Visible and Infrared Spin Scan Radiometer-2 | Operational
| Meteorological. | n/a | |
AWS Instrument
Arctic Weather Satellite Microwave Radiometer | Being developed
| Cross-track scanning microwave radiometer. Provides measurements of atmospheric humidity and temperature. | n/a | |
GEOXO Sounder
GEO Extended Operations Hyperspectral Infrared Sounder | Being developed
| | n/a | |
IASI-NG
Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer - New Generation | Being developed
+/-0.8 degrees Kelvin | Measures profiles of atmospheric temperature, humidity, ozone, carbon monoxide, columns of methane, nitrous oxide, and other minor gases, and sea, ice, and land surface temperature and emissivity. Provides information on aeorols and cloud: fractional coverage, phase, cloud top height (input to Polar AMVs) and particle size. Prime applications: NWP, AC/AQ, climate. Secondary applications: NWC, land/ocean surface monitoring. IASI-NG will resume IASI role as internationl standard for satellite inter-calibration (GSICS). | Medium-resolution IR spectrometer | |
IRS
Infra-Red Sounder | Being developed
| Measurements of vertically resolved clear sky atmospheric motion vectors, temperature and water vapour profiles. | Medium-resolution IR spectrometer | |
METimage
Multi Spectral Imager | Being developed
| Operational multi spectral imager for meteorological EPS-SG VIS/IR Imaging Mission (VII): imagery data for global and regional NWP, NWC, and climate monitoring with information on LST, SST, clouds coverage and micro-physics, land surfaces (vegetation, snow/ice, fire), aerosol and atmospheric motion vectors. Provides collocated cloud mask & characterisation as well as intra-pixel heterogeneity to other EPS-SG missions (with larger footprint). | n/a | |
MWS
Microwave Sounder | Being developed
| All-weather night-day temperature sounding | Absorption-band MW radiometer/spectrometer | |
RO
RO | Being developed
| GNSS receiver for atmospheric temperature and humidity profile sounding. | GNSS radio-occultation receiver | |
Advanced Radiomet
Advanced Radio-occultation receiver | Proposed
| Atmospheric temperature and humidity profiles with high vertical resolution. | GNSS radio-occultation receiver | |
IKFS-3
Advanced Fourier spectrometer | Proposed
| Atmospheric temperature/humidity profiles, data on cloud parameters, water vapour & ozone column amounts, surface temperature. | n/a | |
MTVZA-GY-MP
Advanced Scanning microwave imager-sounder | Proposed
| Atmospheric temperature and humidity profiles, precipitation, sea-level wind speed, snow/ice coverage. | Absorption-band MW radiometer/spectrometer | |
AOPOD
Atmosphere Occultation and Precision Orbit Determination | No longer operational
| A spaceborne dual-frequency GPS receiver for Precision Orbit Determination (POD) and GPS radio occultation (RO) measurements | GNSS radio-occultation receiver | |
HiRDLS
High Resolution Dynamics Limb Sounder | No longer operational
| Measures atmospheric temperature, concentrations of ozone, water vapour, methane, NOx, N2O, CFCs and other minor species, aerosol concentration, location of polar stratospheric clouds and cloud tops. Currently not collecting data on Aqua. | Limb-scanning IR spectrometer | |
TES
Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer | No longer operational
| 3D profiles on a global scale of all infra-red active species from surface to lower stratosphere. Measures greenhouse gas concentrations, tropospheric ozone, acid rain precursors, gas exchange leading to stratospheric ozone depletion. | n/a | |