Haze layers at different heights, monthly (Suomi-NPP)
What it measures. How much tiny airborne particles (aerosols) dim light at different heights high up in the atmosphere, given as monthly profiles from the ground up to about 41 km at six wavelengths of light.
How it's made. Derived from the OMPS Limb-Profiler sensor on the Suomi-NPP satellite, which looks sideways at the edge of the atmosphere, with the data averaged over each month onto a coarse map grid.
How & where you'd use it. Used to track haze and particles in the stratosphere, such as plumes from volcanic eruptions or wildfires, and how that layer changes month to month.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2012-02-07 → ongoing
- Measured bySuomi-NPP (OMPS)
- Processing levelLevel 3
- 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-NPP L3 LP Aerosol Extinction Vertical Profile 5 x 15 deg lat-lon grid multi-wavelength monthly (AER) product contains the retrieved aerosol extinction coefficients measured by the Ozone Mapping and Profiling Suite (OMPS) Limb-Profiler (LP) sensor on the Suomi-NPP 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. Each granule contains data from the daylight portion of each orbit averaged over an entire month in 5 x 15 deg lat-lon grids. Spatial coverage is global (-90 to 90 degrees latitude). The profiles are gridded from the ground up to about 41 km with a vertical resolution of the 1.0 km. The files are written using the Hierarchical Data Format Version 5 or HDF5.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="OMPS_NPP_LP_L3_AER_MONTHLY",
version="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. Official links
- Access the data via HTTPS. GET DATA
- Access the data via the OPeNDAP protocol. USE SERVICE API
- Use the Earthdata Search to find and retrieve data sets across multiple data centers. GET DATA
- README Document VIEW RELATED INFORMATION