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Full catalog/TEMPO_HCHO_L3
TEMPO_HCHO_L3·vV03·dataset

Formaldehyde haze over North America (TEMPO, hourly)

TEMPO gridded formaldehyde total column V03 (PROVISIONAL)
atmosphere NASA LARC_CLOUD Level 3 netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. How much formaldehyde, a gas tied to pollution and natural plant emissions, is stacked up in the air over North America, mapped on a regular grid.

How it's made. Built by combining hourly scans from the TEMPO instrument (on a satellite watching North America) into gridded maps, using an area-weighted method; still a provisional product.

How & where you'd use it. Helps track air quality and the chemistry behind smog formation across North America through the day.

What's measured

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

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2023-08-02 → 2025-09-16
  • Measured byIS-40e (TEMPO)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • FormatsnetCDF-4
  • 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

Formaldehyde Level 3 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. These data reached provisional validation on December 9, 2024.

Get the data

tempo_hcho_l3_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="TEMPO_HCHO_L3",
    version="V03",
    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.