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Full catalog/OMI_MINDS_NO2
OMI_MINDS_NO2·v1.1·dataset

Air pollution nitrogen dioxide (OMI, Aura, 13 km)

OMI/Aura NO2 Tropospheric, Stratospheric & Total Columns MINDS 1-Orbit L2 Swath 13 km x 24 km V1.1 (OMI_MINDS_NO2) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 2 active
In plain English

What it measures. Maps of nitrogen dioxide, a common air pollutant from traffic and industry, showing how much sits in the lower atmosphere, the upper atmosphere, and the full column overhead.

How it's made. Produced from the OMI instrument on NASA's Aura satellite using methods designed to give consistent, comparable pollution records that line up across multiple satellites over decades.

How & where you'd use it. Helps track air pollution trends, identify pollution sources, and study how emissions have changed over the past couple of decades.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › NITROGEN COMPOUNDS › ATMOSPHERIC NITRIC ACIDATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › NITROGEN COMPOUNDS › NITRIC OXIDEATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › NITROGEN COMPOUNDS › NITROGEN DIOXIDEATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › NITROGEN COMPOUNDS › NITROGEN OXIDESATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › NITROGEN COMPOUNDS › NITROUS OXIDE

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

As part of the NASA's Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) program, this project entitled “Multi-Decadal Nitrogen Dioxide and Derived Products from Satellites (MINDS)” will develop consistent long-term global trend-quality data records spanning the last two decades, over which remarkable changes in nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions have occurred. The objective of the project Is to adapt Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) operational algorithms to other satellite instruments and create consistent multi-satellite L2 and L3 nitrogen dioxide (NO2) columns and value-added L4 surface NO2 concentrations and NOx emissions data products, systematically accounting for instrumental differences. The instruments include Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME, 1996-2011), SCanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY (SCIAMACHY, 2002-2012), OMI (2004-present), GOME-2 (2007-present), and TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI, 2018-present). The quality assured L2-L4 products will be made available to the scientific community via the NASA GES DISC website in Climate and Forecast (CF)-compliant Hierarchical Data Format (HDF5) and netCDF formats.

Get the data

omi_minds_no2_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="OMI_MINDS_NO2",
    version="1.1",
    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.