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Full catalog/OMOCNUV
OMOCNUV·v004·dataset

Ultraviolet sunlight reaching and entering the ocean

OMI/Aura Hyperspectral UV Irradiance and Underwater Attenuation Coefficient 1-Orbit L2 Swath 13x24km V004 (OMOCNUV) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 2 active
In plain English

What it measures. Reports how much ultraviolet sunlight reaches the surface and how it penetrates into water, including measures of how quickly UV light fades with depth.

How it's made. Derived from the OMI instrument on the Aura satellite, which measures sunlight in UV wavelengths, processed for each sunlit orbit.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for studying UV exposure at the surface and underwater, which affects skin-health risks, ocean life, and water chemistry.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC RADIATION › ULTRAVIOLET RADIATIONOCEANS › OCEAN OPTICS › ATTENUATION/TRANSMISSION

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 Collection 4 Aura Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) Hyperspectral Surface and Underwater UV Irradiances (OMOCNUV) product is now available from the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center. The OMOCNUV product contains surface UV irradiances from 290 to 399 nm, as well as planar and scalar irradiances and diffuse attenuation coefficients over water, and other ancillary variables. Details can be found in the OMOCNUV readme document (see Documentation tab). The OMOCNUV files are stored in the version 4 netCDF format. Each Level-2 file contains data from the sunlit portion of an orbit (~53 minutes). There are approximately 14 orbits per day. The average file size is about 91 MB.

Get the data

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

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