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Full catalog/OMPS_NPP_NMHCHO_L2
OMPS_NPP_NMHCHO_L2·v1·dataset

Formaldehyde in the air (Suomi-NPP)

OMPS-NPP L2 NM Formaldehyde (HCHO) Total Column swath orbital
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 2 active
In plain English

What it measures. Maps how much formaldehyde gas is in the air column overhead. Formaldehyde is a marker of pollution and natural emissions from plants and fires.

How it's made. Measured by the OMPS Nadir-Mapper instrument on the Suomi-NPP satellite, which derives the formaldehyde amount from ultraviolet light, with each pixel roughly 50x50 km at nadir and global daily coverage.

How & where you'd use it. Helps researchers track air quality and atmospheric chemistry, since formaldehyde is linked to wildfires, vegetation, and industrial emissions.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › CARBON AND HYDROCARBON COMPOUNDS › FORMALDEHYDE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2012-01-04 → ongoing
  • Measured bySuomi-NPP (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-NPP L2 NM Formaldehyde (HCHO) Total Column swath orbital product provides formaldehyde measurements from the Ozone Mapping and Profiling Suite (OMPS) Nadir-Mapper (NM) instrument on the Suomi-NPP satellite. The total column HCHO amount is derived from radiances at wavelengths between 328.5 and 356.5 nm. 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 has typically 400 swaths. The swath width of the NM is about 2800 km with 36 scenes, or pixels, with a footprint size of 50 km x 50 km at nadir. The files are written in the new netCDF version 4 format.

Get the data

omps_npp_nmhcho_l2_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="OMPS_NPP_NMHCHO_L2",
    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.