Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/JPSS
JPSS·dataset

Polar-orbiting satellites mapping the whole Earth (NOAA JPSS)

NOAA Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS)
atmosphere NOAA NOAA active
In plain English

What it measures. Global measurements of the atmosphere, land, and oceans, including sea and land surface temperature, vegetation, clouds, rainfall, snow and ice cover, fire locations and smoke, plus atmospheric temperature, water vapor, and ozone.

How it's made. Gathered by NOAA's Joint Polar Satellite System constellation, which circles the Earth from pole to pole to capture worldwide coverage; the program is planned to run through 2038.

How & where you'd use it. Underpins several-day-ahead forecasts of hurricanes, tornadoes, and blizzards, and helps assess droughts, wildfires, air quality, and coastal water hazards.

What's measured

aws-pdsagricultureclimatemeteorologicalweather

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span— → ongoing

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

*Near Real Time JPSS data is now flowing! See bucket information on the right side of this page to access products!* Satellites in the JPSS constellation gather global measurements of atmospheric, terrestrial and oceanic conditions, including sea and land surface temperatures, vegetation, clouds, rainfall, snow and ice cover, fire locations and smoke plumes, atmospheric temperature, water vapor and ozone. JPSS delivers key observations for the Nation's essential products and services, including forecasting severe weather like hurricanes, tornadoes and blizzards days in advance, and assessing environmental hazards such as droughts, forest fires, poor air quality and harmful coastal waters. Further, JPSS will provide continuity of critical, global observations of Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and land through 2038.

Get the data

noaa_access.py
# NOAA Open Data on AWS — public S3, no login
import s3fs

fs = s3fs.S3FileSystem(anon=True)
# find this dataset's bucket in the docs link in the sidebar, then:
# files = fs.ls("noaa-<bucket>/...")
# open NetCDF/GRIB with xarray, COGs with rioxarray
NOAA Open Data is on public AWS S3 — no login at all (anonymous access).