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Full catalog/OMUVBG
OMUVBG·v003·dataset

Sunburn-causing UV reaching the ground (Aura, daily, 0.25 degree)

OMI/Aura Surface UVB Irradiance and Erythemal Dose Daily L2 Global Gridded 0.25 degree x 0.25 degree V3 (OMUVBG) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 2G active
In plain English

What it measures. Estimates how much sunburn-causing ultraviolet light reaches the ground, including the UVB irradiance and the erythemal dose, which is the amount weighted by its effect on human skin.

How it's made. Produced from NASA's OMI instrument on the Aura satellite, with individual scene measurements binned daily onto a fine global grid without averaging, so users can filter and process them further.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for assessing UV exposure and sunburn risk, public-health guidance, and studies of how ozone and clouds affect surface ultraviolet light.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC RADIATION › ULTRAVIOLET RADIATION

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2004-10-01 → ongoing
  • Measured byAura (OMI)
  • Processing levelLevel 2G
  • 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

This is Level-2G daily global gridded Aura-OMI Spectral Surface UVB Irradiance and Erythemal Dose product (OMUVBG). The OMUVBG is a special Level-2 Global Gridded type data Product (referred as Level 2G or L2G) where Level-2 or swath pixel data are binned (but not averaged)into 0.25x0.25 degree global grids. It contains the data for all L2 scenes that have observation time between UTC times of 00:00:00 and 23:59:59.9999. All ancillary parameters such as latitude, longitude, time, solar and viewing angles are also saved for each pixel. First two dimensions of each parameter correspond to spatial (Lat/Lon based) Grid ID and third dimension identifies the pixel or observed scene (referred as 'candidates' ID). Scientists can apply a data filtering scheme of their choice, average good quality pixels data in each grid and create their Level-3 products. The OMUVBG files are available in the version 5 EOS Hierarchical Data Format (HDF-EOS5). Each file contains daily data from the day lit portion of the globe. The maximum file size for the OMUVBG data product is about 128 MBytes.

Get the data

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="OMUVBG",
    version="003",
    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.