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Full catalog/TOMSN7OVP
TOMSN7OVP·v008·dataset

Ozone readings over ground stations (Nimbus-7)

TOMS Nimbus-7 Ground Station Overpass Data V008 (TOMSN7OVP) at GES DISC
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 3
In plain English

What it measures. Daily ozone-related readings taken directly over specific ground stations, including total ozone in the air column overhead, a measure of UV-absorbing particles, surface reflectivity, and a sulfur dioxide index.

How it's made. Extracted from the Nimbus-7 TOMS instrument by matching its best overhead view to each ground site for every day it operated, and stored as plain text files.

How & where you'd use it. Handy for comparing satellite ozone readings against ground stations and for studying historical ozone, UV haze, and volcanic sulfur dioxide.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY › OXYGEN COMPOUNDS › ATMOSPHERIC OZONE › TOTAL OZONEATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC RADIATION › REFLECTANCE › REFLECTIVITYATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL OPTICAL DEPTH/THICKNESS › UV AEROSOL INDEX

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1978-11-01 → 1993-05-06
  • Measured byNimbus-7 (TOMS)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • 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

The Nimbus-7 Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) version 8 daily ground station overpass data product contains total column ozone, UV aerosol index, Lambertian effective surface reflectivity (Rayleigh corrected), UV aerosol index and sulfur dioxide index values. The overpass data files contain the data derived from the best-matched TOMS field-of-view (FOV) to a site for every day the TOMS instrument was operational. The data are stored in an ASCII format. TOMS data were produced by the Laboratory for Atmospheres at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (Code 614).

Get the data

tomsn7ovp_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="TOMSN7OVP",
    version="008",
    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 GES_DISC
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.