Daily haze and surface color from deep-space camera (DSCOVR)
What it measures. Daily visual plots of haze and surface conditions for the whole sunlit side of Earth, including airborne particle amount, how high haze layers sit, and how much light particles absorb, plus corrected surface color.
How it's made. Generated as visualizations from a deeper data product captured by the EPIC camera on the DSCOVR spacecraft, which views Earth from a far-off vantage point about a million miles away.
How & where you'd use it. Helps people quickly see daily patterns of haze, smoke, and dust from wildfires or dust storms; the underlying numeric product serves more detailed research.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2015-06-13 → ongoing
- Measured byDSCOVR (EPIC)
- Processing levelLevel 2
- FormatsPNG
- StatusACTIVE
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
DSOCVR EPIC_L2 MAIAC-Daily_01 contains plots of data generated from DSCOVR_EPIC_L2_MAIAC_03, the DSCOVR EPIC L2 Multi-Angle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction (MAIAC) Version 03 data product. Data collection for this product is ongoing. The datasets visualized include Aerosol Layer Height (ALH), Aerosol Optical Depth, and Single Scattering Albedo at 340nm, 388nm, 443nm, 551 nm, 680nm, and 780nm. Level 2 Multi-Angle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction (MAIAC) provides an interdisciplinary suite of products for the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC). The current version 3 reports the following products: a) Atmosphere: cloud mask, global aerosol optical depth at 443nm and 551nm, fine mode fraction (over the ocean), aerosol layer height (ALH) globally, and spectral aerosol absorption for detected biomass burning or mineral dust aerosols. The absorption information includes single scattering albedo at 340-780nm range, imaginary refractive index at 680nm (k0), and Spectral Absorption Exponent (SAE) characterizing spectral increase of imaginary refractive index from Red towards UV wavelengths. The aerosol optical properties {AOD, ALH, k0, SAE} are retrieved simultaneously by matching EPIC measurements in the UV-NIR range, including atmospheric oxygen A- and B-bands. b) Land: atmospherically corrected spectral bidirectional reflectance factors (BRF) along with Lambertian surface reflectance and bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) for the backscattering view geometries of EPIC. The BRDF is represented by three parameters of the Ross-Thick Li-Sparse model. c) Ocean: Water leaving reflectance (non-dimensional) at Ultraviolet-Visible (UV-Vis) bands. The parameters are provided at 10 km resolution on a zonal sinusoidal grid with a 1—to 2-hour temporal frequency. MAIAC version 03 also provides gap-filled global composite products for the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) over land and water, leaving reflectance in 5 UV-Vis bands over the global ocean. The composite products represent a weighted running average where the weight of the latest observation is maximized towards the local noon and low aerosol conditions.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="DSCOVR_EPIC_L2_MAIAC-DAILY",
version="01",
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 LARC_CLOUDBrowsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.