GEOS-5 Atmospheric Diagnostics Co-Located with OMI/Aura Satellite Swath

OMUFPSLV provides GEOS-5 Forward Processing for Instrument Teams atmospheric parameters geo-colocated to the OMI/Aura UV2 instrument's 13x24km swath. The Global Modeling and Assimilation Office produced this data for use by the OMI team in their L2 algorithms and related research. Each data file is approximately 45 MB in netCDF4 format.

Use Cases

• Validate OMI L2 retrieval algorithms by comparing them with co-located GEOS-5 model fields like surface_skin_temperature and tropopause_pressure.
• Analyze vertical_wind_profiles at 10m to study atmospheric dynamics in relation to satellite-observed trace gas distributions.
• Investigate boundary layer processes using the boundary_layer_top_pressure field alongside OMI UV-2 measurements.
• Assess surface_pressure from the GEOS-5 model to correct or interpret satellite-based atmospheric column density measurements.

Strengths

• Data is spatially and temporally co-located for direct comparison between model output and satellite observations.
• Files are in netCDF4 format, compatible with most standard scientific data tools and libraries.
• Product is tailored for algorithm development by the operational OMI/Aura instrument team.

Limitations

• The spatial resolution mismatch between the original GEOS-5 grid (0.625°x0.5°) and OMI swath (13x24km) may introduce representativeness errors.
• Specific temporal coverage, total row count, and update frequency are not provided in the description.

Provenance

Source

Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) at NASA, distributed via GES DISC.

Collection Method

Parameters from the GEOS-5 FP-IT assimilated model are geo-colocated in space and time with the OMI/Aura UV2 instrument's swath.

Geography

Global coverage corresponding to the OMI/Aura satellite orbit and swath.