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Full catalog/PACE_SPEXONE_L2_AER_RTAPLAND_NRT
PACE_SPEXONE_L2_AER_RTAPLAND_NRT·v3.0·dataset

Haze and smoke particles over land, live (PACE SPEXone)

PACE SPEXone Level-2 Regional Aerosol Optical Properties Over Land, RemoTAP Algorithm - Near Real-time (NRT) Data, version 3.0
atmosphere NASA OB_CLOUD Level 2 active netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. Describes the tiny airborne particles (haze and smoke) over land — how much there is, how big the particles are, how much light they absorb, and how high the haze layer sits — together with details about the land surface beneath.

How it's made. Retrieved in near-real-time from the SPEXone polarimeter on NASA's PACE satellite using the RemoTAP method, which solves for the air and ground together.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for air-quality and climate research, giving aerosol context for land and ocean-color analyses, and checking atmospheric models.

What's measured

Atmosphere › AerosolsAtmosphere › Aerosols › Aerosol Particle Properties

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2024-02-25 → ongoing
  • Measured byPACE (SPEXone)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsnetCDF-4
  • 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

AER_RTAPLAND provides aerosol and land‐surface properties over land retrieved using the RemoTAP algorithm. Because RemoTAP jointly models surface and atmosphere over land, the suite also provides spectrally resolved land-surface BRDF and BPDF parameters for reflectance and polarization. Typical uses: air-quality and climate studies, aerosol context for ocean-color/land analyses, radiative transfer, and model evaluation. Core geophysical variables in this suite include: • alh — Aerosol layer height (km) • angstrom_440_670 / angstrom_440_870 / angstrom_490_670 — Aerosol Ångström exponents (unitless) • aot / aot550 / aot_fine / aot_coarse — Aerosol optical thickness (unitless) • bpdf_scale, ross_thick, li_sparse, snow_coef — BRDF/BDPF kernel coefficients (unitless) • chla — Chlorophyll-a concentration (mg m⁻³) • fmf / fvf — Aerosol fine mode fraction and fine mode volume fraction (unitless) • lidar_bsca_total / lidar_depol_ratio / lidar_ratio — Aerosol lidar diagnostics (sr⁻¹ m⁻¹, unitless) • mi / mr — Aerosol refractive index (imaginary/real part, unitless) • reff_fine / reff_coarse — Aerosol effective radius (µm) • sph — Aerosol spherical fraction (unitless) • ssa — Aerosol single scattering albedo (unitless) • vd / veff_fine / veff_coarse — Aerosol volume density (µm³ µm⁻²) and effective variance (unitless) • waterfrac_inland — Water fraction for inland pixels (unitless) • wind_speed — Ocean surface wind speed (m s⁻¹)

Get the data

pace_spexone_l2_aer_rtapland_nrt_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="PACE_SPEXONE_L2_AER_RTAPLAND_NRT",
    version="3.0",
    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 OB_CLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.