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Full catalog/XAERDT_L2_AHI_H09
XAERDT_L2_AHI_H09·v1·dataset

Haze, dust and smoke in the air (Himawari-9)

AHI/Himawari-09 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 floating in the air across the satellite's full view of Earth, measured as a number for the thickness of airborne particles (aerosol optical depth).

How it's made. Derived from the Advanced Himawari Imager on Japan's Himawari-9 weather satellite, using a version of NASA's Dark Target algorithm, with a fresh full-disk image roughly every 10 minutes.

How & where you'd use it. Helps track air pollution, dust storms, and smoke plumes through the day, and contributes to a broader effort to merge readings from many satellites into one consistent record.

What's measured

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

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2022-10-24 → 2022-12-31
  • Measured byHimawari-9 (AHI)
  • 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 AHI/Himawari-09 Dark Target Aerosol 10-Min L2 Full Disk 10 km product, short-name XAERDT_L2_AHI_H09 is provided at 10-km spatial resolution (at-nadir) and a 10-minute full-disk cadence that typically yields about 142 granules over the daylit hours of a 24-hour period (there are no images produced at 02:20 or 14:20 UTC for navigation purposes). The Himawari-9 platform currently serves in the operational Himawari position (near 140.7°E) since it was launched November 2, 2016, and replaces Himawari-8. The Himawari-9/AHI collection record spans from 13th December 2022 through 31st December 2022. The XAERDT_L2_AHI_H09 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_AHI_H09 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_AHI_H09) or [Dark Target aerosol team page](https://darktarget.gsfc.nasa.gov/).

Get the data

xaerdt_l2_ahi_h09_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="XAERDT_L2_AHI_H09",
    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.