Summary

Description

The improved Level-2 OMI Aerosol Product 'OMAERO' is now available (http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/Aura/OMI/omaero_v003.shtml ) from NASA GSFC Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC) for public access. This is the second public release of version 003. The data was re-processed in late 2011 using an improved algorithm (processing version 1.2.3.1). After some quick validation the reprocessed data was released to the public in March 2012. There are two Level-2 Aura OMI aerosol products OMAERUV and OMAERO. The OMAERUV product uses the near-UV algorithm. The OMAERO product is based on the multi-wavelength algorithm and that uses up to 20 wavelength bands between 331 nm and 500 nm. OMAERO retrieval algorithm is developed by the KNMI OMI Team Scientists. Drs. Deborah Stein-Zweers, Martin Sneep and Pepijn Veefkind are now the key investigators of this product. The OMAERO product contains Aerosol Optical Depths, Single Scatterin Albedo and other ancillary and geolocation informations. (The shortname for this Level-2 Aerosol Product is OMAERO_V003) OMAERO files are stored in EOS Hierarchical Data Format (HDF-EOS5). Each file contains data from the day lit portion of an orbit (~53 minutes). There are approximately 14 orbits per day. The maximum file size for the OMAERO data product is about 6 Mbytes. A short OMAERO Readme Documnt that includes brief algorithm description, data quality related issues is available from the site(http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/Aura/OMI/documents/v003/OMAERO_README.doc) Data Category Parameters: The OMAERO data file contains a swath which consists of two groups: Data fields: aerosol optical thickness, single scattering albedo, aerosol absorption indices, aerosol type, layer height, Aerosol Extinction Optical Depths and other intermediate and ancillary parameters and Data Quality Flags. Geolocation Fields: Latitude, Longitude, Time(TAI93), Seconds, Solar Zenith Angles, Viewing Zenith Angles, Relative Azimuth Angle, Terrain Pressure, Ground Pixel Quality Flags.