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Full catalog/XAERDT_L2_ABI_G16
XAERDT_L2_ABI_G16·v1·dataset

Haze, dust and smoke in the air (GOES-16, 10 km)

ABI/GOES-16 Dark Target Aerosol 10-Min L2 Full Disk 10 km
atmosphere NASA LAADS Level 2 netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. How much haze, dust, and smoke is in the air over the Americas, refreshed every 10 minutes across the satellite's full view, at about 10 km resolution.

How it's made. Produced from the ABI imager on the GOES-16 geostationary satellite using a special version of the MODIS Dark Target algorithm, as part of a project that applies the same method across several satellites for consistency.

How & where you'd use it. Because it updates so frequently from a fixed vantage point, it's useful for watching airborne pollution, smoke, and dust evolve through the day over the Americas.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL OPTICAL DEPTH/THICKNESSATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL OPTICAL DEPTH/THICKNESS › ANGSTROM EXPONENTATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLSATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL PARTICLE PROPERTIES

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2019-01-01 → 2023-01-01
  • Measured byGOES-16 (ABI)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • 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

The ABI/GOES-16 Dark Target Aerosol 10-Min L2 Full Disk 10 km product, short-name XAERDT_L2_ABI_G16 is provided at 10-km spatial resolution (at-nadir) and a 10-minute full-disk cadence that typically yields about 144 granules over the daylit hours of a 24-hour period. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite – GOES-16 has been serving in the operational GOES-East position (near -75°W) since December 18, 2017. The GOES-16/ABI collection record spans from January 2019 through December 2022. The XAERDT_L2_ABI_G16 product is a part of the Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO)–Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) Dark Target Aerosol project under NASA’s Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) program, led by Robert Levy, uses a special version of the MODIS Dark Target (DT) aerosol retrieval algorithm to produce Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) and other aerosol parameters derived independently from seven sensor/platform combinations, where 3 are in GEO and 4 are in LEO. The 3 GEO sensors include Advanced Baseline Imagers (ABI) on both GOES-16 (GOES-East) and GOES-17 (GOES-West), and Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) on Himawari-8. The 4 LEO sensors include MODIS on both Terra and Aqua, and VIIRS on both Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20. Adding the LEO sensors reinforces a major goal of this project, which is to render a consistent science maturity level across DT aerosol products derived from both types and sources of orbital satellites. The XAERDT_L2_ABI_G16 product, in netCDF4 format, contains 45 Science Data Set (SDS) layers that include 8 geolocation and 37 geophysical SDSs. For more information consult LAADS [product description page](https://ladsweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/missions-and-measurements/products/XAERDT_L2_ABI_G16) or [Dark Target aerosol team page](https://darktarget.gsfc.nasa.gov/).

Get the data

xaerdt_l2_abi_g16_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="XAERDT_L2_ABI_G16",
    version="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 LAADS
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.