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Full catalog/TEMPO_HCHO_L3_NRT
TEMPO_HCHO_L3_NRT·vV02·dataset

Formaldehyde pollution over North America, near real-time (TEMPO)

TEMPO gridded formaldehyde total column V02 (NRT) (PROVISIONAL)
atmosphere NASA LARC_CLOUD Level 3 active netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. How much formaldehyde, a gas linked to wildfires and certain pollution sources, is in the column of air overhead, mapped on a grid across North America.

How it's made. Produced by combining individual scans from the TEMPO instrument (which watches North America from a fixed vantage in space) into gridded maps using a fast near-real-time processor.

How & where you'd use it. Supports quick-turnaround air-quality monitoring, delivering results within a few hours; note this is a provisional, near-real-time product.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › AIR QUALITY › VOLATILE ORGANIC COMPOUNDSATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › CARBON AND HYDROCARBON COMPOUNDS › FORMALDEHYDE

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

Formaldehyde Level 3 (PROVISIONAL) files provide trace gas 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 formaldehyde vertical columns, ancillary data used in air mass factor calculations and reference sector or de-striping corrections, and retrieval quality flags. The re-gridding algorithm uses an area-weighted approach. The formaldehyde 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_hcho_l3_nrt_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="TEMPO_HCHO_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.