OMPS-NPP Aerosol Extinction Vertical Profiles from Suomi-NPP Satellite

2012 to present data from the OMPS Limb-Profiler sensor on the Suomi-NPP satellite, providing global daily measurements of stratospheric aerosol extinction coefficients. The dataset offers vertical profiles from the ground to about 80 km altitude at six specific wavelengths, replacing a previous single-wavelength product. It is produced by the OMINRT organization using a neural network for near-real-time processing.

Use Cases

• Tracking the vertical distribution and evolution of stratospheric aerosols from volcanic eruptions using the /ProfileFields/RetrievedExtCoeff data.
• Analyzing wavelength-dependent aerosol properties across 510, 600, 675, 745, 869, and 997 nm for particle size characterization.
• Assimilating global, near-daily aerosol extinction profiles into atmospheric circulation and climate models.
• Studying long-term trends in stratospheric aerosol burden and its correlation with ozone profile measurements from the same instrument.

Strengths

• Provides multi-wavelength aerosol extinction data at six specific bands, an improvement over the previous single-wavelength product.
• Offers high vertical resolution of approximately 1.8 km from the ground to 80 km altitude.
• Delivers near-global spatial coverage with about 14.5 orbits per day, each providing three profiles spaced ~250 km apart.
• Processed using a neural network trained on historical data for consistent near-real-time retrieval.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, and specific column names are not provided by any source.
• Sources conflict on license information, with some specifying 'other-license-specified' and others listing 'None'.
• The dataset is limited to daylight portions of each orbit.

Provenance

Source

OMINRT organization, using the OMPS Limb-Profiler sensor on the Suomi-NPP satellite.

Collection Method

Retrieved aerosol extinction coefficients produced via a neural network trained on LP-L2-AER data for NRT processing.

Time Range

2012 to present (implied by Suomi-NPP satellite operations).

Freshness

2026-03-12 22:56:16.089820

Geography

Global, from -90 to 90 degrees latitude.