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Full catalog/OMAERUV
OMAERUV·v004·dataset

Haze, dust and smoke in the air (Aura)

OMI/Aura Near UV Aerosol Optical Depth and Single Scattering Albedo 1-orbit L2 Swath 13x24 km V004 (OMAERUV) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 2 active
In plain English

What it measures. Measures tiny airborne particles like dust, smoke, and haze, reporting how much they dim sunlight and how strongly they absorb versus scatter ultraviolet light.

How it's made. Derived from a single orbit of the Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA's Aura satellite, at a 13x24 km footprint.

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

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 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 Aura Ozone Monitoring Instrument level-2 near UV Aerosol data product OMAERUV (Version 004) is available from the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) for the public access. The OMAERUV retrieval algorithm is developed by the US OMI Team Scientists. Dr. Omar Torres (GSFC/NASA) is the principal investigator of this product. The OMAERUV product contains Aerosol Optical Depth, Aerosol Single Scattering Albedo, Absorption Optical Depth, UV Aerosol Index, and Aerosol Optical Depth over clouds at three wavelengths (354, 388, and 500 nm), and other ancillary and geolocation parameters, in the OMI field of view (13x24 km). The OMAERUV files are stored in the version 4.0 Network Common Data Form (NetCDF). 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 OMAERUV data product is about 17 Mbytes.

Get the data

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="OMAERUV",
    version="004",
    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.