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Full catalog/AERDB_D3_GEOLEO_Merged
AERDB_D3_GEOLEO_Merged·v1·dataset

Haze, dust and smoke in the air, daily (merged satellites)

GEO-LEO Merged Deep Blue Aerosol Daily 1 x 1 degree Gridded L3
atmosphere NASA LAADS Level 3 netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. A daily map of how much haze, dust, and smoke is hanging in the air, expressed as aerosol optical thickness, on a 1-degree global grid.

How it's made. Built by merging aerosol retrievals from several satellites (including GOES, Himawari, Aqua, Terra, NOAA-20, and Suomi-NPP) using a quality-filtered, error-weighted average for each grid cell.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for tracking air quality, dust storms, and wildfire smoke, supporting health-related air monitoring and studies of how particles affect climate. Note this first release covers only May 2019 through April 2020.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL OPTICAL DEPTH/THICKNESSATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL OPTICAL DEPTH/THICKNESS › ANGSTROM EXPONENTATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLSATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL PARTICLE PROPERTIES

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2019-05-01 → 2020-05-01
  • Measured byGOES-16 (ABI) · GOES-17 (ABI) · Himawari-8 (AHI) · Aqua (MODIS) · Terra (MODIS) · NOAA-20 (VIIRS) · Suomi-NPP (VIIRS)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsnetCDF-4
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
  • Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
  • Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description

The GEO-LEO Merged Deep Blue Aerosol Daily 1 x 1 degree Gridded L3 product, short-name AERDB_D3_GEOLEO_Merged contains gridded Aerosol Optical Thickness (AOT) at 550 nm reference wavelength that are composited from the L2G product (AERDB_L2G_GEOLEO_Merged) using best-estimate AOT values. Please note that while the individual standalone gridded data layer for each instrument is calculated as the arithmetic mean, the merged AOT layer is derived via an error-weighted average approach. The final retrievals used in the aggregation process are QA-filtered best-estimate values for cells that are measured on the day of interest. Further, at least three such retrievals are required to render the validity of a grid cell on any given day. Each L3 daily aggregated datafile is spatially comprised of a 1˚ x 1˚ horizontal grid that exists for every 30 minutes. This first release of these products spans from May 2019 through April 2020 with a potential to generate additional temporal coverage in the future. The Level-3 (L3) Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO)-Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) Merged Deep Blue Aerosol Daily 1 x 1-degree Gridded dataset is part of a 12-product suite produced by an Earth Science Research from Operational Geostationary Satellite Systems (ESROGSS)-funded project. The 12 products in this project include nine derived from three Geostationary Earth Observation (GEO) instruments and three from merged data from GEO and Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) instruments. The AERDB_D3_GEOLEO_Merged product, in netCDF4 format, contains 16 GEO-LEO Merged Group Science Data Set (SDS) layers and 15 GEO and LEO SDSs.

Get the data

aerdb_d3_geoleo_merged_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AERDB_D3_GEOLEO_Merged",
    version="1",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from LAADS
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.