OMTO3e: Daily Global Ozone and Cloud Fraction from Aura/OMI Satellite

OMI/Aura TOMS-Like Ozone and Radiative Cloud Fraction L3 (OMTO3e) is a Level-3 gridded product from NASA's Aura satellite Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI). It provides daily global maps of total column ozone, radiative cloud fraction, and solar/viewing zenith angles on a 0.25 x 0.25 degree latitude/longitude grid. Data are stored in HDF-EOS5 format, with each daily file containing approximately 15 orbits and a maximum size of about 2.8 Mbytes.

Use Cases

• Monitoring global ozone layer health based on daily total column ozone measurements.
• Analyzing relationships between cloud cover and atmospheric chemistry using radiative cloud fraction data.
• Studying long-term ozone trends and seasonal variations from the daily, gridded time series.
• Validating atmospheric models with satellite-derived ozone and ancillary solar/viewing geometry data.

Strengths

• Provides a specific, high-resolution global grid at 0.25 x 0.25 degrees.
• Data is processed to select the best pixel (shortest path length) from quality-filtered Level-2 sources.
• Cross-platform presence on NASA Earthdata and Data.gov signals its importance and official provenance.
• File size is explicitly documented (max ~2.8 MB), indicating manageable data volume.

Limitations

• Column names and detailed schema are not provided in any source description.
• Metadata for size, row count, and author is inconsistent or missing across platforms.
• Documentation is limited to the technical description; no user guide or sample code is referenced.

Provenance

Source

GES_DISC (Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center), produced by the OMI science team.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing data from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA's Aura satellite, processed to a Level-3 gridded product.

Time Range

Daily data coverage (specific date range not provided).

Freshness

2026-04-09 23:28:02.809877

Geography

Global coverage.