Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/TEMPO_CLDO4_L3_NRT
TEMPO_CLDO4_L3_NRT·vV02·dataset

Cloud cover and height over North America (TEMPO, near real-time)

TEMPO gridded cloud fraction and pressure (O2-O2 dimer) V02 (NRT) (PROVISIONAL)
atmosphere NASA LARC_CLOUD Level 3 active netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. How much of the sky is covered by clouds and how high those clouds sit, mapped across North America. It is provisional, near-real-time data.

How it's made. Produced from the TEMPO instrument (watching North America from a fixed vantage in space) by merging its scan data onto a regular grid using a fast processor built for speed over precision.

How & where you'd use it. Designed for uses needing quick turnaround, within a few hours of observation, such as air-quality alerts and supporting other TEMPO pollution products that depend on knowing where clouds are.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS › CLOUD PROPERTIES › CLOUD TOP PRESSUREATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS › CLOUD PROPERTIES › CLOUD FRACTION

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2025-09-17 → ongoing
  • Measured byIS-40e (TEMPO)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • FormatsnetCDF-4
  • 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

O2-O2 cloud Level 3 (PROVISIONAL) files provide cloud information on a regular grid covering the TEMPO field of regard for nominal TEMPO observations. Level 3 files are derived by combining information from all Level 2 files constituting a TEMPO East-West scan cycle. The files are provided in netCDF4 format, and contain information on effective cloud fraction, cloud optical centroid pressure, and ancillary data. The re-gridding algorithm uses an area-weighted approach. The O2-O2 cloud near real-time (NRT) files are produced using a fast version of the TEMPO baseline retrieval processor. The TEMPO NRT products are useful for applications with low-latency requirements (<2-3 hours after observation is taken). The NRT processing optimizes radiance calibration, image navigation and registration, and cloud and trace gas retrievals for rapid processing, while ensuring that product quality is sufficient for most NRT applications.

Get the data

tempo_cldo4_l3_nrt_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="TEMPO_CLDO4_L3_NRT",
    version="V02",
    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 LARC_CLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.