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Full catalog/TEMPO_NO2_L2_NRT
TEMPO_NO2_L2_NRT·vV02·dataset

Nitrogen dioxide pollution, near-real-time swaths (TEMPO)

TEMPO NO2 tropospheric and stratospheric columns V02 (NRT) PROVISIONAL
atmosphere NASA LARC_CLOUD Level 2 active netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. Near-real-time readings of nitrogen dioxide pollution, given as the amount in vertical columns of the lower and upper atmosphere, at about 10-kilometer detail, scene by scene.

How it's made. Produced from the TEMPO instrument (a space-based air-quality sensor watching North America) using a faster version of its retrieval process to deliver results within a couple of hours. This is a provisional product.

How & where you'd use it. Built for time-sensitive air-quality applications, helping track traffic and industrial pollution and smog-forming chemistry across North America soon after it is observed.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › NITROGEN COMPOUNDS › NITROGEN DIOXIDEATMOSPHERE › AIR QUALITY › NITROGEN OXIDESATMOSPHERE › AIR QUALITY › TROPOSPHERIC OZONE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2025-09-17 → ongoing
  • Measured byIS-40e (TEMPO)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • 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

Nitrogen dioxide Level 2 (PROVISIONAL) files provide trace gas information at TEMPO’s native spatial resolution, ~10 km^2 at the center of the Field of Regard(FOR), for individual granules. Each granule covers the entire North-South TEMPO FOR but only a portion of the East-West FOR. The files are provided in netCDF4 format, and contain information on tropospheric, stratospheric and total nitrogen dioxide vertical columns, ancillary data used in air mass factor and stratospheric/tropospheric separation calculations, and retrieval quality flags. The retrieval uses a three-step approach: (1) spectral fitting of slant columns, (2) air mass factor calculation and derivation of vertical columns, and (3) stratospheric/tropospheric separation. The nitrogen dioxide 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_no2_l2_nrt_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="TEMPO_NO2_L2_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.