This page provides the minimal information needed to access the near real time data from the GERB instruments.

The ROLSS provides near real-time Level 2.0 (radiances and fluxes) data from the GERB instruments. This FTP site aims to provide data to the user community within less than 4 hours. The data are automatically removed from the site after 40 days. The long term archive of the Edition ARG products is hosted on the GGSPS at RAL and at the British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC).

The use of the data is subject to a careful reading of the GERB Data Policy, the GERB Edition-1 Quality Summary, and the GERB Edition-1 Release Paper. To access to the near real-time data using FTP, follow these steps:

1. Register to the ROLSS mailing list.
2. Keep the username (email address in lower case) and password submitted.
3. Wait for the confirmation email of the list.
4. Access the data through FTP on “gerb.oma.be” using your username and password.

This mailing list is used to broadcast announcements concerning the ROLSS products and their distribution (such as new product versions, server downtimes) to the registered users. The archives of this list are available here.

At this time, the site proposes data from the GERB-1 instrument on Meteosat-9 (also known as MSG-2). These data are unvalidated and should not be used for quantitative scientific studies. The access to these pre-release data is normally restricted to the GERB science team members. For this reason, it is possible that you can log on the FTP site but are not allowed to access the G1 directory. Let us know in case of difficulty (email to the owner of the ROLSS mailing list).

These GERB-1 data are processed using the SEVIRI-2 imager data (the imager on MSG-2). For this reason, the near-real time data are available in subdirectories of

   G1/SEV2

of the ROLSS FTP site gerb.oma.be.

We strongly recommend using a FTP command-like client.

The GERB data are available under different space/time formats: ARG, BARG, EUROPE, ARCH (defined here). To know which geolocation file you need to use for a data file, look into the HDF file you want to use for an attribute under HDF path “/Geolocation/Geolocation File Name”. It is a string that refers to the name of the geolocation file to use. The data is stored in the following subdirectories:

   G1_SEV2_L20_ARG_SOL            Shortwave      GERB-res/15'      (ARG)
   G1_SEV2_L20_ARG_TH             Longwave       GERB-res/15'      (ARG)
   G1_SEV2_L20_ARG_GEO            Geolocation    GERB-res/15'      (ARG)

   G1_SEV2_L20_BARG_SOL_M15_R50   Shortwave      GERB-res/15'      (BARG)
   G1_SEV2_L20_BARG_TH_M15_R50    Longwave       GERB-res/15'      (BARG)
   G1_SEV2_L20_BARG_SGEO_M15_R50  Geolocation    GERB-res/15'      (BARG)

   G1_SEV2_L20A_HR_SOL_TH         Archive        High-Resolution   (SHI full disk)
   G1_SEV2_L20_HR_GEO             Geolocation    High-Resolution   (SHI full disk)
   G1_SEV2_L20_HR_STATION         Stations       High-Resolution   (SHI stations)

   G1_SEV2_L20_HR_SOL_EUROPE      Shortwave      High-res Europe   (SHI Europe)
   G1_SEV2_L20_HR_TH_EUROPE       Longwave       High-res Europe   (SHI Europe)
   G1_SEV2_L20_HR_GEO_EUROPE      Geolocation    High-res Europe   (SHI Europe)

• GERB data format web page
• MSG-RMIB-GE-UG : L2 RMIB products user guide ftp://gerb.oma.be/Documents/userguide.pdf
• Data format: web pages for HDF5

For more information contact the GERB team at gerb [at] oma [dot] be