S5P_L2_NP_BD7: Sentinel-5P TROPOMI and VIIRS Cloud Product

Sentinel-5P's TROPOMI instrument, a hyperspectral spectrometer covering ultraviolet to shortwave infrared wavelengths, provides atmospheric composition data. This specific product fuses these observations with high-resolution VIIRS cloud data from the Suomi NPP satellite, classifying cloud cover into four confidence levels. The dataset offers cloud information across three scaled fields-of-view to account for extended cloud coverage beyond the nominal sensor footprint.

Use Cases

• Improving atmospheric trace gas retrievals by applying VIIRS-based cloud masking to Sentinel-5P TROPOMI data.
• Analyzing cloud fraction and distribution at high spatial resolution (~5.5 km at nadir) for climate studies.
• Studying the correlation between VIIRS sun-normalized radiance in bands M7, M9, M11 and cloud optical properties.
• Validating cloud detection algorithms by comparing the four-class confidence scheme (confidently cloudy to confidently clear) with other datasets.

Strengths

• Leverages a unique satellite formation, combining Sentinel-5P's atmospheric spectroscopy with Suomi NPP's VIIRS high-resolution imager for enhanced cloud characterization.
• Provides cloud data at a high spatial resolution of approximately 5.5 km at nadir for observations from August 6, 2019, onward.
• Includes data for three scaled fields-of-view, offering context on cloud coverage beyond the primary sensor pixel.

Limitations

• Critical metadata is missing or conflicting across sources: specific column names, dataset size, row counts, and author information are unavailable.
• The license is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' without explicit terms, requiring users to investigate further.
• Data before August 6, 2019, requires a different, legacy data collection (S5P_L2__NP_BD7_1), complicating long-term time series analysis.

Provenance

Source

European Space Agency (ESA) and the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Sentinel-5P mission); NASA/NOAA (Suomi NPP satellite, VIIRS instrument). Hosted by NASA GES DISC.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing via the TROPOMI hyperspectral spectrometer and VIIRS imager, with data processing to generate the fused L2 product.

Time Range

From August 6, 2019, onward (with pre-August 2019 data in a separate collection).

Freshness

2026-04-09 22:06:11.086900

Geography

Global coverage from sun-synchronous orbit.