HIRDLS was a mid-infrared limb-scanning radiometer (21 channels from 6.12 to 17.76 µm and provided sounding observations to observe the lower stratosphere with improved sensitivity and accuracy. HIRDLS was carried on the Aura mission, part of the A-train procession of polar orbiting satellites forming part of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS).

This dataset contains level 2 version 6.00 data of the global distributions of temperature, clouds, aerosols, and 10 trace species O3, H2O, CH4, N2O, NO2, HNO3, N2O5, CFC11, CFC12, and ClONO2 in the stratosphere and upper troposphere at high vertical and horizontal resolution in the Earth's atmosphere between about 8 and 100 km, from the High Resolution Dynamics Limb Sounder (HIRDLS) instrument.