Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/S5P_L2__AER_AI_HiR
S5P_L2__AER_AI_HiR·v2·dataset

Haze, dust and smoke in the air (Sentinel-5P)

Sentinel-5P TROPOMI Aerosol Index 1-Orbit L2 5.5km x 3.5km V2 (S5P_L2__AER_AI_HiR) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 2 active
In plain English

What it measures. An index showing how much haze, dust, and smoke is in the air, based on how aerosols change the way ultraviolet light scatters, at high spatial detail (about 5.5 km), measured one orbit at a time.

How it's made. Calculated from the Sentinel-5P satellite's TROPOMI instrument by comparing measured ultraviolet light against what a clean atmosphere would produce.

How & where you'd use it. Especially good at spotting absorbing particles like smoke and dust high in the atmosphere, useful for tracking wildfires, dust storms, and air quality.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2018-04-30 → ongoing
  • Measured bySentinel-5P (TROPOMI)
  • 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

Starting from August 6th in 2019, Sentinel-5P TROPOMI along-track high spatial resolution (~5.5km at nadir) has been implemented. For data before August 6th of 2019, please check S5P_L2__AER_AI_1 data collection. The Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor (Sentinel-5P or S5P) satellite mission is one of the European Space Agency's (ESA) new mission family - Sentinels, and it is a joint initiative between the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the ESA. The sole payload on Sentinel-5P is the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI), which is a nadir-viewing 108 degree Field-of-View push-broom grating hyperspectral spectrometer, covering the wavelength of ultraviolet-visible (UV-VIS, 270nm to 495nm), near infrared (NIR, 675nm to 775nm), and shortwave infrared (SWIR, 2305nm-2385nm). Sentinel-5P is the first of the Atmospheric Composition Sentinels and is expected to provide measurements of ozone, NO2, SO2, CH4, CO, formaldehyde, aerosols and cloud at high spatial, temporal and spectral resolutions. The TROPOMI UV Aerosol Index has been calculated based on wavelength dependent changes in Rayleigh scattering in the UV spectral range where ozone absorption is weak. A residual value is calculated from measured top-of-atmosphere (TOA) reflectance and per-calculated theoretical reflectance for a Rayleigh scattering-only atmosphere given a wavelength pair. TROPOMI UVAI products use the classical wavelength pair of 340/380 nm, and the OMI chosen 354/388 nm pair for the long-term continuous AI record. Figure 1 shows TROPOMI UVAI of orbit# 4060.

Get the data

s5p_l2__aer_ai_hir_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="S5P_L2__AER_AI_HiR",
    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.