Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/OMPS_N21_LP_L2_AER_DAILY
OMPS_N21_LP_L2_AER_DAILY·v1.0·dataset

Haze and smoke at different altitudes (NOAA-21, daily)

OMPS-N21 L2 LP Aerosol Extinction Vertical Profile swath daily 3slit V2 (OMPS_N21_LP_L2_AER_DAILY) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 2 active
In plain English

What it measures. Daily vertical profiles showing how much haze and smoke is present at different altitudes high in the atmosphere, measured at six colors of light from the ground up to about 80 kilometers.

How it's made. Retrieved from the OMPS Limb-Profiler sensor on the NOAA-21 satellite, which looks sideways at the atmosphere's edge to build height-resolved profiles.

How & where you'd use it. Tracks stratospheric aerosols, including the spread of volcanic plumes and smoke high in the atmosphere, which affect climate and complement ozone measurements.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL EXTINCTION

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2022-11-10 → ongoing
  • Measured byNOAA-21 (OMPS)
  • 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 OMPS-N21 L2 LP Aerosol Extinction Vertical Profile swath daily 3slit (AER) product contains the retrieved aerosol extinction coefficients measured by the Ozone Mapping and Profiling Suite (OMPS) Limb-Profiler (LP) sensor on the NOAA-21 satellite. The AER product measures stratospheric aerosol abundance and evolution at 6 wavelengths (510, 600, 675, 745, 869 and 997 nm) to complement the OMPS LP measurements of stratospheric and mesospheric profile ozone. This product replaces the previous single wavelength 675 nm (AER675) product. Each granule contains data from the daylight portion of each orbit measured for a full day. Spatial coverage is global (-90 to 90 degrees latitude), and there are about 14.5 orbits per day each measuring three limb profiles spaced approximately 250 km in the cross-track direction. The profiles are measured from the ground up to about 80 km with a vertical resolution of the retrieved profiles of approximately 1.8 km. The files are written using the Hierarchical Data Format Version 5 or HDF5.

Get the data

omps_n21_lp_l2_aer_daily_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="OMPS_N21_LP_L2_AER_DAILY",
    version="1.0",
    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.