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Full catalog/houston-aod
houston-aod·dataset

Houston Air Haze and Pollution Levels

Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD)
atmosphere NASA VEDA COG
In plain English

What it measures. How hazy or polluted the air is over the Houston metro area, measured as the amount of tiny airborne particles, averaged over a decade.

How it's made. Made from NASA's MODIS satellite measurements of airborne particles (aerosol optical depth).

How & where you'd use it. Helps reveal long-term air-quality patterns and pollution hotspots affecting residents' health.

What's measured

houstonaod

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2000-01-01 → 2019-01-01
  • Spatial extent-97, 27.993, -94, 31.01
  • FormatsCOG

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

MODIS-calculated Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) over the Houston metro area decadally averaged.

Get the data

veda_access.py
# NASA VEDA — open STAC API, anonymous (cloud-optimized GeoTIFFs)
from pystac_client import Client

cat = Client.open("https://openveda.cloud/api/stac")
col = cat.get_collection("houston-aod")
items = list(col.get_items())          # browse the analysis-ready COGs
# open an asset with rioxarray:
# import rioxarray; da = rioxarray.open_rasterio(items[0].assets["cog_default"].href)
NASA VEDA is an open STAC catalog — browse and stream the cloud-optimized GeoTIFFs anonymously (no login).