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Full catalog/OMPS_NPP_NMSO2_L2
OMPS_NPP_NMSO2_L2·v2·dataset

Sulfur dioxide pollution in the air (OMPS)

OMPS-NPP L2 NM Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) Total and Tropospheric Column swath orbital V2 (OMPS_NPP_NMSO2_L2) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 2 active
In plain English

What it measures. Amounts of sulfur dioxide gas in the air along the satellite's track, both the total column from ground to space and the portion at different heights in the lower atmosphere.

How it's made. Retrieved from the OMPS instrument on the Suomi-NPP satellite, which measures sunlight, using an algorithm that fits the gas's fingerprint to produce these orbit-by-orbit swaths.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for tracking volcanic eruptions and industrial pollution, since sulfur dioxide is a marker of both and affects air quality and climate.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › SULFUR COMPOUNDS › SULFUR DIOXIDE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2012-01-26 → 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 Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) Total and Tropospheric Column swath orbital collection 2 version 2.0 product contains the retrieved sulfur dioxide (SO2) measured by the Ozone Mapping and Profiling Suite (OMPS) Nadir-Mapper (NM) sensor on the Suomi-NPP satellite. A direct vertical column fitting (DVCF) algorithm is used to retrieve the SO2 total column amount and column amounts in the lower (centered at 2.5 km), middle (centered at 7.5 km) and upper (centered at 11 km) troposphere, as well as the lower stratosphere (centered at 16 km). Each granule contains data from the daylight portion for a single orbit or about 50 minutes. Spatial coverage is global (-90 to 90 degrees latitude), and there are about 14 orbits per day each with a swath width of 2600 km. There are 35 pixels in the cross-track direction, with a pixel resolution of about 50 km x 50 km at nadir. The files are written using the Hierarchical Data Format Version 5 or HDF5.

Get the data

omps_npp_nmso2_l2_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="OMPS_NPP_NMSO2_L2",
    version="2",
    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.