Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/HAQES_NA_PM25_TOT
HAQES_NA_PM25_TOT·v1·dataset

Fine-particle air pollution, PM2.5 (North America)

HAQES 3-Hourly Ensemble mean surface total PM2.5 concentration, North America V1 (HAQES_NA_PM25_TOT) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 4 active
In plain English

What it measures. Estimated levels of fine-particle air pollution (PM2.5) at ground level across North America, updated every three hours. PM2.5 is the tiny soot, dust, and smoke particles that harm health.

How it's made. Not a single satellite measurement but a blended forecast: several NASA, Navy, and NOAA air-quality models are combined into an ensemble average and mapped onto a regional grid.

How & where you'd use it. Supports public-health and air-quality monitoring by showing where harmful fine-particle pollution is concentrated, especially during wildfires, dust storms, and volcanic events.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › AIR QUALITYATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › PARTICULATE MATTERHUMAN DIMENSIONS › PUBLIC HEALTH › ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH FACTORS › PARTICULATE MATTER CONCENTRATIONSHUMAN DIMENSIONS › PUBLIC HEALTH › ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH FACTORS › PARTICULATE MATTER (PM 2.5)

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2022-01-02 → ongoing
  • Measured byHAQES (NOT APPLICABLE)
  • Processing levelLevel 4
  • Spatial extent-132, 21, -58.5, 53.5
  • 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

This product provides HAQES 3-hourly ensemble mean surface total PM2.5 concentration over the continental United States (CONUS) and surrounding regions. The data is mapped on Lambert projection. The Hazardous Air Quality Ensemble System (HAQES) is a real-time ensemble forecast of hazardous air quality events, such as wildfires, dust storms, and Volcanic eruptions. Both regional and global models from multiple agencies are used to create the ensemble, including the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Navy Aerosol Analysis and Prediction System (NAAPS) from Naval Research Laboratory, the Global Ensemble Forecast System Aerosols (GEFS), High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR), and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (NOAA-EPA) Atmosphere-Chemistry Coupler-Community Multiscale Air Quality model (NACC-CMAQ) from NOAA. The prototypes of HAQES products were developed by the George Mason University Air Quality Laboratory as part of the NASA Health Air Quality Applied Science Team (HAQAST).

Get the data

haqes_na_pm25_tot_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="HAQES_NA_PM25_TOT",
    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 GES_DISC
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.