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Full catalog/OMAEROG
OMAEROG·v003·dataset

Haze, dust and smoke in the air, daily grid (OMI, 0.25°)

OMI/Aura Multi-wavelength Aerosol Optical Depth and Single Scattering Albedo Daily L2 Global Gridded 0.25 degree x 0.25 degree V3 (OMAEROG) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 2G active
In plain English

What it measures. A daily global map of tiny airborne particles like haze, dust, and smoke, including how much they dim sunlight and how much light they absorb versus scatter, sorted into quarter-degree grid boxes. It also carries extras like cloud fraction and viewing angles.

How it's made. Derived from the OMI instrument on the Aura satellite using a method that compares roughly 20 colors of light, with the individual measurements simply binned into grid cells (not averaged) so users can filter them as they like.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for tracking air quality, dust and smoke plumes, and how aerosols affect sunlight, with the gridded layout letting scientists build their own customized summaries.

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 2G
  • 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

This Level-2G daily global gridded product OMAEROG is based on the pixel level OMI Level-2 Aerosol product OMAERO, based on the multi-wavelength algorithm that uses up to 20 wavelength bands between 331 nm and 500 nm. OMAEROG is a special Level-2 gridded product where pixel level products are binned into 0.25 x 0.25 degree global grids. It contains the data for all scenes that have observation time between UTC times of 00:00:00 and 23:59:59.9999. All data pixels that fall in a grid box are saved without averaging. Scientists can apply a data filtering scheme of their choice and create new gridded products. The OMAEROG data product contains almost all parameters that are in OMAERO. For example, in addition to the extinction optical depth and single scattering albedo, it also contains aerosol indices, cloud fraction, cloud pressure, terrain height, geolocation, solar and satellite viewing angles, and extensive quality flags. The OMAEROG 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 OMAEROG data product is about 78 Mbytes.

Get the data

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

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