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Full catalog/SFC_NITROGEN_DIOXIDE_CONC
SFC_NITROGEN_DIOXIDE_CONC·v1·dataset

Nitrogen dioxide air pollution at ground level, yearly average

Nitrogen Dioxide Surface-Level Annual Average Concentrations V1 (SFC_NITROGEN_DIOXIDE_CONC) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 4
In plain English

What it measures. Yearly average levels of nitrogen dioxide, a traffic- and combustion-related air pollutant, right at ground level where people breathe, mapped finely across the world's land areas.

How it's made. Estimated with a statistical model that links thousands of ground monitors to land-use patterns, then scaled to other years using satellite (OMI) and reanalysis (MERRA-2) data covering 1990 to 2020.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for public-health and air-quality research, including studies of pollution exposure and its effects on people across many countries and years.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › NITROGEN COMPOUNDS › NITROGEN DIOXIDE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1990-01-01 → 2020-12-31
  • Measured byData Analysis (NOT APPLICABLE)
  • Processing levelLevel 4
  • Spatial extent-180, -60, 180, 75
  • 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

The Nitrogen Dioxide Surface-Level Annual Average Concentrations Product (SFC_NITROGEN_DIOXIDE_CONC) contains estimated global NO2 surface values derived using a Land Use Regression (LUR) model (based on 5220 NO2 monitors in 58 countries and land use variables) for the years 2010-2012. NO2 column densities from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument and MERRA-2 scale the concentrations to other years between 1990 and 2020. This product is part of NASA's Health and Air Quality Applied Sciences Team (HAQAST) effort. The data are global over land and span the latitude range between 60 south and 75 north, gridded at 0.0083 degree resolution (array size is 43080 x 16200). Data variables include surface NO2, as well as latitude and longitude values. The data are written to files using the new version 4 netCDF format. The average file size is about 150 Megabytes.

Get the data

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

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