Global smoke and dust haze index, offline (Copernicus)
What it measures. The same global ultraviolet aerosol index showing absorbing airborne particles like smoke, dust, and volcanic ash, with high spatial detail. This offline version is processed for greater accuracy.
How it's made. Computed from TROPOMI ultraviolet measurements on ESA Copernicus's Sentinel-5P satellite at Level-2, in the standard offline mode delivered after a short delay.
How & where you'd use it. Used for reliable monitoring and study of wildfire smoke, dust outbreaks, and volcanic plumes when a more refined product is preferred over the fastest one.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2018-04-30 → ongoing
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
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 Collection provides Sentinel-5P Level-2 AER AI products, which contains high-resolution imagery of the UV Aerosol Index (UVAI), also called the Absorbing Aerosol Index (AAI).
Get the data
# ESA Copernicus Data Space — open STAC API (free account)
from pystac_client import Client
cat = Client.open("https://stac.dataspace.copernicus.eu/v1")
search = cat.search(
collections=["sentinel-5p-l2-aer-ai-offl"], # add _cog or _nc for a format variant
bbox=(-10, 35, 30, 60), # your area (W,S,E,N)
datetime="2024-01-01/2024-12-31",
)
items = list(search.items()) # then read assets with rioxarray / xarray Browsing the Copernicus STAC is open; downloading bytes needs a free Copernicus Data Space account.
Official links
- Open data source Copernicus STAC