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Full catalog/g3blspb
g3blspb·v53·dataset

Trace gases at altitude, measured by moonlight (native format)

SAGE III/ISS L2 Lunar Event Species Profiles (Native) V053
atmosphere NASA LARC_CLOUD Level 2 Binary
In plain English

What it measures. Vertical profiles of gases and particles high in the atmosphere, including ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and water vapor, for a single observation made using moonlight. Each file covers one lunar event.

How it's made. Produced by the SAGE III instrument on the International Space Station, which watches moonlight pass through the edge of Earth's atmosphere; this is the same data as the HDF5 version but stored in the instrument's native file format.

How & where you'd use it. Supports long-term monitoring of the ozone layer and atmospheric chemistry, feeding into international assessments of ozone depletion.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › TRACE GASES/TRACE SPECIESATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › NITROGEN COMPOUNDS › NITROGEN DIOXIDEATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › NITROGEN COMPOUNDS › NITROGEN OXIDESATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPORATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRYATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › OXYGEN COMPOUNDSATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › NITROGEN COMPOUNDSATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR › WATER VAPOR INDICATORSATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › HALOCARBONS AND HALOGENS › CHLORINE DIOXIDEATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › HALOCARBONS AND HALOGENSATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR › WATER VAPOR INDICATORS › WATER VAPORATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › OXYGEN COMPOUNDS › ATMOSPHERIC OZONE › TOTAL OZONE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2017-05-31 → 2024-11-24
  • Measured byISS (SAGE III)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • FormatsBinary
  • 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

g3blspb_53 is the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III (SAGE III) on the International Space Station (ISS) (SAGE III/ISS) Level 2 Lunar Event Species Profiles (Native) V053 data product. It contains all the species products for a single lunar event. Launched on February 19, 2017 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Kennedy Space Center, the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III on the International Space Station (SAGE III/ISS), the second instrument from the SAGE III project, is externally mounted on the International Space Station (ISS). This ISS-based instrument uses a technique known as occultation, which involves looking at the light from the Sun or Moon as it passes through Earth’s atmosphere at the edge, or limb, of the planet to provide long-term monitoring of ozone vertical profiles of the stratosphere and mesosphere. The data provided by SAGE III/ISS includes other key components of atmospheric composition and their long-term variability, focusing on the study of aerosols, nitrogen dioxide, nitrogen trioxide, and water vapor. SAGE data has historically been used by the World Meteorological Organization to inform their periodic assessments of ozone depletion. These new observations from the International Space Station will continue the SAGE team's contributions to ongoing scientific understanding of the Earth's atmosphere. Several improvements predominately the ozone, nitrogen dioxide and aerosol products are realized in the version 6.0 data product and cause it to be recommended over version 5.3. These improvements include: filling transmission gaps (caused mainly by sunspots) leading to several hundred more events, additional term in L1 uncertainty, updated ozone absorption cross-section database, more robust covariance computation of aerosol uncertainty. Version 6.0 also has incorporated aerosol flags and particle size distribution information which were previously available in separate files. Further details can be found in the version 6.0 release notes.

Get the data

g3blspb_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="g3blspb",
    version="53",
    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_CLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.