OMTO3: Global Ozone Column Measurements from Aura Satellite

OMI/Aura satellite data provides total column ozone measurements at a nadir pixel resolution of 13 x 24 km using ultraviolet radiance at 317.5 and 331.2 nm. The Level-2 product includes auxiliary parameters for retrieval quality, such as cloud fraction, aerosol correction, and geolocation. Each file contains approximately 53 minutes of daylight orbital data, with about 14 orbits generated per day.

Use Cases

• Monitoring long-term stratospheric ozone trends and Antarctic ozone hole evolution based on daily global total column values.
• Correcting for cloud and aerosol interference in atmospheric models using the included cloud fraction and scene-reflectivity parameters.
• Assessing regional air quality and tropospheric ozone pollution by analyzing spatial patterns in the geolocated swath data.
• Validating climate and chemical transport model outputs against satellite-derived ozone column amounts.
• Investigating the impact of volcanic SO2 emissions on ozone retrievals using the algorithm's trace gas contamination corrections.

Strengths

• Algorithm applies hyperspectral corrections for key uncertainty factors, including clouds, aerosols, and SO2 contamination.
• Provides high-resolution spatial data with a nadir pixel size of 13 km x 24 km.
• Data is produced from a well-established satellite instrument (OMI on Aura) with a defined algorithm heritage from the TOMS version-8 team.

Limitations

• Critical metadata is missing or conflicting across sources: specific column names, row counts, and precise temporal coverage are not provided.
• Data is stored in the HDF-EOS5 format, which may require specialized software or libraries for access and analysis.
• The 'other-license-specified' license status is unclear and requires further investigation for specific use terms.

Provenance

Source

NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC)

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing via the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on the Aura spacecraft, processed using the enhanced TOMS version-8 algorithm.

Time Range

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Freshness

2026-04-09 23:28:11.558559

Geography

Global