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Full catalog/OMAEROe
OMAEROe·v003·dataset

Haze, dust and smoke in the air, daily best-pixel map (OMI/Aura, 0.25 deg)

OMI/Aura Multi-wavelength Aerosol Optical Depth and Single Scattering Albedo L3 1 day Best Pixel in 0.25 degree x 0.25 degree V3 (OMAEROe) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 3 active
In plain English

What it measures. Daily maps of airborne particles like haze, dust, and smoke, summarized as how much the particles dim incoming light and how much light they absorb versus scatter.

How it's made. Built from the OMI instrument on NASA's Aura satellite, which picks the single best measurement in each 0.25-degree grid cell each day using up to 20 wavelength bands.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for tracking air pollution, dust storms, and smoke, and for studying how airborne particles affect air quality and climate.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL EXTINCTION › AEROSOL SINGLE SCATTERING ALBEDOATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL OPTICAL DEPTH/THICKNESS

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2004-10-01 → ongoing
  • Measured byAura (OMI)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • 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 OMI science team produces this Level-3 Aura/OMI Global Aerosol Data Products OMAEROe (0.25deg Lat/Lon grids). The OMAEROe product selects best aerosol value from the Level2G good quality data that are reported in each grid, based on the multi-wavelength algorithm that uses up to 20 wavelength bands between 331 nm and 500 nm. The selection criteria is based on the shortest optical path length (secant of solar zenith angle + secant of viewing zenith angle). The OMAEROe files are stored in the version 5 EOS Hierarchical Data Format (HDF-EOS5). Each file contains daily data from approximately 15 orbits. The maximum file size for the OMAEROe data product is about 7 Mbytes. (The shortname for this Level-3 Global Gridded Aerosol Product is OMAEROe)

Get the data

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="OMAEROe",
    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.