Nitrogen dioxide air pollution, mapped (TEMPO)
What it measures. Maps of nitrogen dioxide, a common air pollutant from traffic and industry, showing how much sits in the lower atmosphere (the part we breathe) and higher up, laid out on a regular grid.
How it's made. Made from the TEMPO instrument, which watches North America from a fixed position in space; many individual scans are combined and re-gridded into these maps. The data is 'provisional', meaning validated but not final.
How & where you'd use it. Lets people track air pollution across the day and region, supporting air-quality monitoring and public health work.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2023-08-02 → 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
Nitrogen dioxide 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 tropospheric and stratospheric nitrogen dioxide vertical columns, ancillary data used in air mass factor and stratospheric/tropospheric separation calculations, 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
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="TEMPO_NO2_L3",
version="V04",
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_NO2_L3_V04 (NASA Application to search, discover, visualize, refine, and access NASA Earth Observation data) GET DATA
- Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring Pollution (TEMPO) Project Trace Gas and Cloud Level 2 and 3 Data Products: User Guide, 10.5067/doc/tempo/L2andL3UserGuide/V2.1 VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- Virtual data set reference GET DATA