Air pollution (NO2) columns (Sentinel-5P)
What it measures. Amounts of nitrogen dioxide, a common air pollutant, stacked through the lower atmosphere, the upper atmosphere, and the full column overhead.
How it's made. Retrieved from the TROPOMI instrument on the Sentinel-5P satellite, processed with consistent methods designed to match readings across many satellites for long-term comparison.
How & where you'd use it. Used to monitor air pollution and how nitrogen oxide emissions from traffic, industry and power plants have changed over the years.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2018-05-01 → ongoing
- Measured bySentinel-5P (TROPOMI)
- Processing levelLevel 2
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
- 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
As part of the NASA's Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) program, this project entitled “Multi-Decadal Nitrogen Dioxide and Derived Products from Satellites (MINDS)” will develop consistent long-term global trend-quality data records spanning the last two decades, over which remarkable changes in nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions have occurred. The objective of the project Is to adapt Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) operational algorithms to other satellite instruments and create consistent multi-satellite L2 and L3 nitrogen dioxide (NO2) columns and value-added L4 surface NO2 concentrations and NOx emissions data products, systematically accounting for instrumental differences. The instruments include Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME, 1996-2011), SCanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY (SCIAMACHY, 2002-2012), OMI (2004-present), GOME-2 (2007-present), and TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI, 2018-present). The quality assured L2-L4 products will be made available to the scientific community via the NASA GES DISC website in Climate and Forecast (CF)-compliant Hierarchical Data Format (HDF5) and netCDF formats.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="TROPOMI_MINDS_NO2",
version="1.1",
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. Official links
- Access the data via HTTPS GET DATA
- OPeNDAP Service USE SERVICE API
- README Document VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- Use the Earthdata Search to find and retrieve data sets across multiple data centers. GET DATA