OMI/Aura Multi-wavelength Aerosol Optical Depth and Single Scattering Albedo 1-orbit L2 Swath 13x24 km V003 (OMAERO) at GES DISC

Summary

Abstract: The improved Level-2 OMI Aerosol Product 'OMAERO' is now available (http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/Aura/OMI/omaero_v003.shtml )
from NASA GSFC Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC) for public access. This is the second public release of version 003. The data was re-processed in late 2011 using an improved algorithm (processing version 1.2.3.1). After some quick validation the reprocessed data was released to the public in March 2012.

There are two Level-2 Aura OMI aerosol products OMAERUV and OMAERO. The OMAERUV product uses the near-UV algorithm. The OMAERO product is based on the multi-wavelength algorithm and that uses up to 20 wavelength bands between 331 nm and 500 nm. OMAERO retrieval algorithm is developed by the KNMI OMI Team Scientists. Drs. Deborah Stein-Zweers, Martin Sneep and Pepijn Veefkind are now the key investigators of this product. The OMAERO product contains Aerosol Optical Depths, Single Scatterin Albedo and other ancillary and geolocation informations.

OMAERO files are stored in EOS Hierarchical Data Format (HDF-EOS5). Each file contains data from the day lit portion of an orbit (~53 minutes). There are approximately 14 orbits per day. The maximum file size for the OMAERO data product is about 6 Mbytes.

A list of tools for browsing and extracting data from these
files can be found at: http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/Aura/tools.shtml

A short OMAERO Readme Documnt that includes brief algorithm description, data quality related issues is available from the site(http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/Aura/OMI/documents/v003/OMAERO_README.doc)

The Ozone Monitoring Instrument(OMI) flying on the EOS-Aura satellite (launched in July 2004), provides daily global measurements of four important US Environmental Protection Agency's criteria pollutants (Ozone, Nitrogen dioxide, Sulfur dioxide and Aerosols from biomass burning and industrial emissions), HCHO, BrO, OClO and surface UV irradiance. OMI is a contribution of the Netherlands Agency for Aerospace Programs (NIVR)in collaboration with Finish Meterological Institute (FMI), to the US EOS-Aura Mission. The principal investigator's (Dr. Pieternel Levelt) institute is the KNMI(Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute).

For more information on Ozone Monitoring Instrument and
atmospheric data products, please visit the OMI-Aura sites:

http://aura.gsfc.nasa.gov/
http://www.knmi.nl/omi/research/documents/ .

Data Category Parameters:

The OMAERO data file contains a swath which consists of two
groups:

Data fields: aerosol optical thickness, single scattering albedo,
aerosol absorption indices, aerosol type, layer height,
Aerosol Extinction Optical Depths and other intermediate and
ancillary parameters and Data Quality Flags.

Geolocation Fields:

Latitude, Longitude, Time(TAI93), Seconds, Solar Zenith Angles,
Viewing Zenith Angles, Relative Azimuth Angle, Terrain Pressure,
Ground Pixel Quality Flags.

For the full set of Aura products from the Aura sensors OMI,
MLS, and HIRDLS, available from the GES DISC, please see the
link below.
http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/Aura/

Atmospheric Composition data from Aura and other satellite
sensors can be ordered from the following site:
http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/acdisc/