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Full catalog/sentinel-5p-l2-aer-lh-nrti
sentinel-5p-l2-aer-lh-nrti·dataset

How high smoke and dust sit in the sky (Copernicus)

Sentinel-5P Level 2 Aerosol Layer Height (NRTI)
atmosphere ESA ESA Copernicus active
In plain English

What it measures. Estimates the altitude of light-absorbing aerosol layers such as smoke and dust, in other words how high above the ground these hazes are floating.

How it's made. Calculated from TROPOMI measurements on ESA Copernicus's Sentinel-5P satellite, delivered as a Level-2 product in near-real time (within a few hours).

How & where you'd use it. Knowing the height of smoke and ash layers helps forecast where plumes will drift and supports aviation warnings and air-quality modeling.

What's measured

SentinelCopernicusESASatelliteGlobalAtmosphereL2AER-LHNRTIEUEC

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2018-04-01 → 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 LH products, which contains high-resolution imagery of the UV Aerosol Index (UVAI), also called the Absorbing Layer Height (ALH).

Get the data

copernicus_access.py
# 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-lh-nrti"],   # 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.