How much sunlight the Sun is sending (TEMPO)
What it measures. How much sunlight, across ultraviolet and visible colors, the Sun is actually sending toward the instrument at any given time.
How it's made. Recorded by NASA's TEMPO instrument using a dedicated solar diffuser, then calibrated for brightness and color before being saved as an early-stage Level 1 file.
How & where you'd use it. This solar reference is a building-block input: TEMPO needs to know the incoming sunlight to figure out how much was absorbed or scattered by air pollution, so it mainly supports the mission's pollution products rather than being used directly. The data is still provisional.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2023-08-01 → 2025-11-27
- Measured byIS-40e (TEMPO)
- Processing levelLevel 1B
- 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
Level 1 irradiance files provide solar irradiance measured using the working solar diffuser. Each file includes the measured solar irradiance for all the North-South cross-track pixels. The files are provided in netCDF4 format, and contain information on radiometrically and wavelength calibrated solar irradiance for the UV and visible bands, corresponding noise, parameterized wavelength grid, solar viewing geometry, quality flags and other ancillary information. The product is produced using the L0-1b processor which includes multiple steps: (1) Image processing to produce radiometrically calibrated radiance, and (2) Additional wavelength calibration to improve wavelength registration. These data reached provisional validation on December 9, 2024.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="TEMPO_IRR_L1",
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. Official links
- How to cite ASDC data VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- Earthdata Search for TEMPO_IRR_L1_V03 (NASA Application to search, discover, visualize, refine, and access NASA Earth Observation data) GET DATA
- ASDC Data and Information for TEMPO VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring Pollution (TEMPO) Project Level 1 Data Products: User Guide VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- TROPOSPHERIC EMISSIONS: MONITORING OF POLLUTION (TEMPO) PROJECT Validation and Quality Assessment of the TEMPO Level-2 Trace Gas Products VIEW RELATED INFORMATION