Summary

Description

The OMI/Aura Level-2G SO2 Data Product OMSO2G (Version 003) is now available http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/Aura/OMI/omso2g_v003.shtml ) from the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) for the public access. (The shortname for this Level-2 OMI total column SO2 product is OMSO2G) The algorithm leads for this product are NASA/UMBC OMI scientists Dr. Nikolay Krotkov (nickolay.a.krotkov@nasa.gov) and Dr. Arlin J.Krueger (krueger@umbc.edu). This Level-2G daily global gridded product OMSO2G is based on the pixel level OMI Level-2 SO2 product OMSO2. OMSO2G data product is a special Level-2 gridded product where pixel level products are binned into 0.125x0.125 degree global grids. It contains the data for all scenes that have observation time betweeen UTC times of 00:00:00 and 23:59:59.9999 . All data pixels that fall in a grid box are saved without averaging. Scientist can apply data filtering scheme of their choice and create new gridded products. The GES DISC developed interactive tool Giovanni (http://giovanni.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ) provides web based capabilities to browse and explore these data. The OMSO2G data product contains almost all parameters that are contained in OMSO2 files. For example, in addition to three values of SO2 Vertical column corresponding to three a-priori vertical profiles used in the retrieval algorithm, and ancillary parameters e.g UV aerosol index, cloud fraction, cloud pressure, geolocation, solar and satellite viewing angles, and extensive quality flags. OMSO2G files are stored in EOS Hierarchical Data Format (HDF-EOS5). Each file contains daily data from approximately 15 orbits . The maximum file size for the OMTO3G data product is about 100 Mbytes. A short OMSO2G Readme Document that includes brief algorithm description and documents that provides known data quality related issues are available from the UMBC OMI site( http://so2.umbc.edu/omi/omi_docs.html )