Haze, dust and smoke, satellites merged (gridded)
What it measures. A merged, gridded estimate of how much haze, dust, and smoke is in the air (aerosol thickness), combining seven different satellites into one best-estimate map every 30 minutes.
How it's made. Built by blending aerosol readings from three geostationary imagers (GOES-16, GOES-17, Himawari-8) and four polar-orbiting instruments (VIIRS on two satellites, MODIS on Terra and Aqua) onto a quarter-degree grid using the Deep Blue method.
How & where you'd use it. Gives a continuous, gap-filled picture of airborne particles for air-quality and climate work. The first release covers May 2019 to April 2020.
What's measured
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 2G
- 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 0.25x0.25 degree Gridded L2 product, short-name AERDB_L2G_GEOLEO_Merged contains gridded Aerosol Optical Thickness (AOT) at 550 nm reference wavelength, derived from seven merged GEO-LEO AOT layers (G16-ABI, G17-ABI, H08-AHI, SNPP-VIIRS, NOAA20-VIIRS, Terra MODIS and Aqua MODIS) and from each of the individual (three GEO and four LEO) instrument sources. Each L2G aggregated datafile is spatially comprised of a 0.25˚ x 0.25˚ horizontal grid that exists for every 30 minutes. This represents a 30-minute Deep Blue best-estimate AOT from each of the seven sources besides an error-weighted merged AOT layer. 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-2G (L2G) Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO)-Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) Merged Deep Blue Aerosol 0.25 x 0.25-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_L2G_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
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="AERDB_L2G_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. Official links
- Data product documentation VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- Search and order products from LAADS website. GET DATA
- A pdf version User's Guide for dark target products. VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- Earthdata Search allows users to search, discover, visualize, refine, and access NASA Earth Observation data. GET DATA