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Full catalog/OMAERO
OMAERO·v003·dataset

Haze, dust and smoke in the air (OMI, multi-color)

OMI/Aura Multi-wavelength Aerosol Optical Depth and Single Scattering Albedo 1-orbit L2 Swath 13x24 km V003 (OMAERO) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 2 active
In plain English

What it measures. How much haze, dust, and smoke is in the air, measured across many colors of light (up to 20 wavelength bands), along with how strongly the particles absorb sunlight (single scattering albedo).

How it's made. Retrieved from the OMI instrument on the Aura satellite using a multi-wavelength algorithm, with one file per sunlit orbit and about 14 orbits a day.

How & where you'd use it. Used to study airborne particles and their effect on sunlight and air quality, valuable for both pollution and climate research.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL EXTINCTION › AEROSOL SINGLE SCATTERING ALBEDOATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL OPTICAL DEPTH/THICKNESS › AEROSOL OPTICAL DEPTHATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL OPTICAL DEPTH/THICKNESS › UV AEROSOL INDEXATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL OPTICAL DEPTH/THICKNESS › VIS AEROSOL INDEX

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2004-10-01 → ongoing
  • Measured byAura (OMI)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • 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

The Level-2 Aura Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) Aerosol Product (OMAERO) is now available from NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) for public access. This is the second public release of version 003. The data was re-processed in late 2011 using an improved algorithm (processing version 1.2.3.1). After some quick validation the reprocessed data was released to the public in March 2012. The shortname for this Level-2 Aerosol Product is OMAERO_V003. There are two Level-2 Aura OMI aerosol products OMAERUV and OMAERO. The OMAERUV product uses the near-UV algorithm. The OMAERO product is based on the multi-wavelength algorithm and that uses up to 20 wavelength bands between 331 nm and 500 nm. OMAERO retrieval algorithm is developed by the KNMI OMI Team Scientists. Drs. Deborah Stein-Zweers, Martin Sneep and Pepijn Veefkind are now the key investigators of this product. The OMAERO product contains Aerosol Optical Depths, Single Scattering Albedo, and other ancillary and geolocation information. The OMAERO files are stored in the version 5 EOS Hierarchical Data Format (HDF-EOS5). Each file contains data from the day lit portion of an orbit (~53 minutes). There are approximately 14 orbits per day. The maximum file size for the OMAERO data product is about 6 Mbytes.

Get the data

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

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