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Full catalog/S5P_L2__CLOUD_
S5P_L2__CLOUD_·v1·dataset

Cloud cover and height (Sentinel-5P TROPOMI)

Sentinel-5P TROPOMI Cloud 1-Orbit L2 7km x 3.5km V1 (S5P_L2__CLOUD_) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 2
In plain English

What it measures. Where clouds are and how high they sit, measured one satellite orbit at a time across the globe.

How it's made. Produced from the TROPOMI instrument on Europe's Sentinel-5P satellite, a spectrometer that reads ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light to detect clouds and air pollutants.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for studying cloud patterns and as a necessary companion to Sentinel-5P's air-quality measurements, since clouds affect how those pollutants are read.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS › CLOUD PROPERTIES › CLOUD FRACTIONATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS › CLOUD PROPERTIES › CLOUD HEIGHTATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS › CLOUD PROPERTIES › CLOUD TOP HEIGHTATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS › CLOUD PROPERTIES › CLOUD TOP PRESSUREATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS › CLOUD PROPERTIES › CLOUD TOP TEMPERATUREATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS › CLOUD RADIATIVE TRANSFER › CLOUD REFLECTANCE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2018-04-30 → 2019-08-06
  • Measured bySentinel-5P (TROPOMI)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • StatusCOMPLETE

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. Starting from July 13th in 2020, five Sentinel-5P TROPOMI level-2 products including total and tropospheric column ozone, sulfur dioxide, CLOUD, and formaldehyde have been generated in processor version 2. For data before August 6th of 2019, please check S5P_L2__CLOUD__1 data collection. For data between August 6th of 2019 and July 13th of 2020, please check S5P_L2__CLOUD__HiR_1 data collection. For data after July 13th of 2020, please check S5P_L2__CLOUD__HiR_2 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 Cloud products are retrieved by two algorithms. The S5P_CLOUD_OCRA is based on the Optical Cloud Recognition Algorithm which generates the fractional cloud cover. The S5P_CLOUD_ROCINN (the Retrieval Of Cloud Information through Neural Networks algorithm) is built on measurements in and around the O2 A-band, which produces the cloud optical thickness and the cloud top height.

Get the data

s5p_l2__cloud__access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="S5P_L2__CLOUD_",
    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.