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MetOp ERA5 PBLH Dataset

Large-scale dataset of MetOp satellite radiances collocated with ERA5 Planetary Boundary Layer Height (PBLH) targets, introduced in:

Larosa et al., Planetary Boundary Layer Height Retrieval from Synergistic Microwave--Infrared Observations from Operational Polar Satellites, under review.

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Overview

The dataset covers the calendar year 2022, sampled at weekly intervals (one date per week, from 3 January to 26 December), with four synoptic overpass times per date (00, 06, 12, and 18 UTC). It contains 194 orbital passages from the MetOp-C satellite, totalling over 4.3 million samples distributed across all seasons and latitudes.

The teamx/ folder contains 30 additional overpasses from two dates (14 February 2025 and 25 June 2025) collocated with the TEAMx observational campaign over the European Alps. These are used as an independent out-of-distribution evaluation set.

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Structure

data/          194 HDF5 files — main dataset (training, validation, test)
teamx/         30 HDF5 files  — TEAMx campaign overpasses (independent evaluation)

Each file corresponds to one orbital passage and is named:

iasi_YYYYMMDD_HH_METOPC_with_target.h5

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File Format

Each HDF5 file contains the following groups:

Geolocation/

Field	Shape	Description
Latitude	(H, 30)	Latitude in units of 1e-4 degrees
Longitude	(H, 30)	Longitude in units of 1e-4 degrees
Satellite_zenith_angle	(H, 30)	Satellite zenith angle
Solar_zenith_angle	(H, 30)	Solar zenith angle
Surface_height	(H, 30)	Surface elevation (m)
Surface_type	(H, 30)	Surface type flag

Data/

Field	Shape	Description
scalrad	(H, 30, 168)	IASI infrared radiances, scaled (W/m² sr m⁻¹)
btemps	(H, 30, 20)	AMSU-A and MHS brightness temperatures; scale factor 0.01 K
cloudflag	(H, 30, 10)	Cloud flags per IASI pixel
target_blh	(H, 30, 4)	ERA5 PBLH target: [mean, std, min, max] of the 4 nearest ERA5 grid points (m)

H is the number of scan lines in the passage (typically ~800).

AVHRR/

AVHRR cloud fraction and radiance statistics collocated to the IASI footprint.

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Target Variable

Data/target_blh[:, :, 0] is the mean ERA5 PBLH over the 4 nearest ERA5 grid points, in metres. This is the regression target used in the companion paper. The remaining three channels provide the standard deviation, minimum, and maximum across the 4 points, which can be used to assess collocation uncertainty.

ERA5 PBLH is derived using the bulk Richardson number method and carries a production lag of several months relative to the observation time.

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Citation

If you use this dataset, please cite:

@misc{larosa2026pblh,
  author = {Salvatore Larosa and Domenico Cimini and Saverio Teodosio Nilo and Mariassunta Viggiano and Lorenzo Innocenti and Luca Catalano and Claudio Rossi and Francesco Di Paola and Donatello Gallucci and Sabrina Gentile and Edoardo Geraldi and Elisabetta Ricciardelli and Filomena Romano and Paolo Garza},
  journal = {Remote Sensing, MDPI},
  title  = {Planetary Boundary Layer Height Retrieval from Synergistic Microwave--Infrared Observations from Operational Polar Satellites},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {Under review},
}