How brightly the surface reflects ultraviolet light (OMI)
What it measures. How brightly Earth's surface reflects ultraviolet light, accounting for the specific viewing and lighting angles, along with the top-of-atmosphere brightness it was calculated from.
How it's made. Derived from the OMI instrument on NASA's Aura satellite, with one file covering the sunlit part of each orbit (about 14 orbits a day).
How & where you'd use it. Mainly a technical input feeding OMI's cloud, aerosol, and trace-gas measurements, designed to slot into existing OMI processing rather than be used directly.
What's measured
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 OMI/Aura Global Geometry-Dependent Surface LER 1-Orbit L2 Swath 13x24km product, or OMGLER, provides GLER, and the computed top-of-atmosphere (TOA) radiance from which GLER is derived, for the OMI field of view. The OMGLER data also contain a number of ancillary/input parameters for each OMI pixel used to compute TOA radiance. The primary intended use of the product is to provide surface reflectance information for OMI cloud, aerosol and trace gas algorithms. GLER is designed to easily replace commonly used LER climatologies within existing OMI algorithms. The product lead is Joanna J. Joiner (OMI US science team leader). The algorithm developer is Wenhan Qin. The OMGLER product file is produced in the version 5 Hierarchical Data Format (HDF-EOS5). Each file contains GLER data for the daylit portion of an orbit (~53 minutes). There are approximately 14 orbits per day. Files are roughly 9 MB in size.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="OMGLER",
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. Official links
- Access the data via HTTPS. GET DATA
- Use the Earthdata Search to find and retrieve data sets across multiple data centers. GET DATA
- Access the data via the OPeNDAP protocol. USE SERVICE API
- README Document VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- OMI Data User's Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- File Specification Document VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- OMI Algorithm Theoretical Basis Documents VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- PUBLICATIONS VIEW RELATED INFORMATION