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Full catalog/MIL2ASAE
MIL2ASAE·v003·dataset

Haze, dust and smoke in the air (MISR)

MISR Level 2 Aerosol parameters V003
atmosphere NASA LARC_CLOUD Level 2 active netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. Estimates of tiny particles floating in the air, such as haze, dust, and smoke, including how much of them is in a column of atmosphere and what kind of particles they are.

How it's made. Derived from the MISR instrument on the Terra satellite, which views each spot on Earth from nine different camera angles in four colors of light, then turns those views into aerosol estimates.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for tracking air quality, smoke and dust events, and how natural and human-made particles change over months and seasons, and for studying how particles affect sunlight and climate.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLSATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL PARTICLE PROPERTIESATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL EXTINCTIONATMOSPHERE › AIR QUALITY › TURBIDITYATMOSPHERE › AIR QUALITY › PARTICULATES

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1999-12-18 → ongoing
  • Measured byTerra (MISR)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsnetCDF-4
  • 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

MIL2ASAE_3 is the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) Level 2 Aerosol parameters Version 3 product. It contains information on retrieved aerosol column amount, aerosol particle properties, and ancillary information based on Level 1B2 geolocated radiances observed by MISR. Data collection for this product is ongoing. As the instrument flies overhead, each piece of Earth's surface below is successively imaged by all nine cameras in each of the 4 wavelengths (blue, green, red, and near-infrared). The goal of MISR is to improve our understanding of the fate of sunlight in Earth's environment and distinguish different types of clouds, particles, and surfaces. Specifically, MISR monitors the monthly, seasonal, and long-term trends in three areas: 1) amount and type of atmospheric particles (aerosols), including those formed by natural sources and by human activities; 2) amounts, types, and heights of clouds, and 3) distribution of land surface cover, including vegetation canopy structure. The entire mission has been reprocessed to version 3. The revision to the aerosol and land surface products includes both product format and significant algorithm changes, which impact the quality and performance of both aerosol and land surface retrievals.

Get the data

mil2asae_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="MIL2ASAE",
    version="003",
    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.