OMPS/NPP PCA SO2 Total Column 1-Orbit L2 Swath 50x50km V2 (OMPS_NPP_NMSO2_PCA_L2) at GES DISC

Description

The OMPS_NPP_NMSO2_PCA_L2 product is part of the MEaSUREs (Making Earth Science Data Records for Use in Research Environments) suite of products. It is retrieved from the NASA/NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) Nadir Mapper (NM) spectrometer and provides contiguous daily global monitoring of anthropogenic and volcanic sulfur dioxide (SO2), an important pollutant and aerosol precursor that affects both air quality and the climate. The product is based on the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center principal component analysis (PCA) spectral fitting algorithm (Li et al., 2013, 2017), and continues (Zhang et al., 2017) NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) standard Aura/Ozone Monitoring Instrument SO2 product (OMSO2). The latest OMPS_NPP_NMSO2_PCA_L2 V2 product uses new Jacobian lookup tables and more realistic model based a priori profiles in anthropogenic SO2 retrievals. This helps to more accurately account for the pixel-to-pixel variation in SO2 sensitivity due to different factors such as the vertical distribution of SO2, solar and viewing angles, surface reflectivity, and cloudiness. As compared with the previous OMPS_NPP_NMSO2_PCA_L2 V1.2 product that assumes the same SO2 sensitivity for all OMPS pixels, the new V2 anthropogenic SO2 retrievals have reduced retrieval biases especially over background regions (see Figure 1 for an example). The same updated PCA SO2 retrieval algorithm (Li et al., 2020) is also used to produce the recently released OMSO2 V2 product (doi:10.5067/Aura/OMI/DATA2022). The new OMPS_NPP_NMSO2_PCA_L2 V2 product thus offers enhanced consistency between the NASA EOS standard (OMI) and continuity (OMPS) SO2 data records Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) is a short-lived gas primarily produced by volcanoes, power plants, refineries, metal smelting and burning of fossil fuels. Where SO2 remains near the Earth's surface, it is toxic, causes acid rain, and degrades air quality. Where SO2 is lofted into the free troposphere, it forms aerosols that can alter cloud reflectivity and precipitation. In the stratosphere, volcanic SO2 forms sulfate aerosols that can result in climate change.

Resources

Name Format Description Link
21 Search results for publications that cite this dataset by its DOI. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=10.5067%2FMEASURES%2FSO2%2FDATA205
21 Access the dataset landing page from the GES DISC website. https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datacollection/OMPS_NPP_NMSO2_PCA_L2_2.html
21 Access the data via HTTP https://measures.gesdisc.eosdis.nasa.gov/data/SO2/OMPS_NPP_NMSO2_PCA_L2.2
21 Access the data via the OPeNDAP protocol. https://measures.gesdisc.eosdis.nasa.gov/opendap/SO2/OMPS_NPP_NMSO2_PCA_L2.2
21 Use the Earthdata Search to find and retrieve data sets across multiple data centers. https://search.earthdata.nasa.gov/search?q=OMPS_NPP_NMSO2_PCA_L2
21 Global Sulfur Dioxide Monitoring Home Page https://so2.gsfc.nasa.gov/
33 README document https://docserver.gesdisc.eosdis.nasa.gov/public/project/MEaSUREs/Krotkov/README.OMPS_NPP_NMSO2_PCA_L2.v2.pdf
34 Annual mean SO2 vertical column densities (VCDs) in Dobson Units (DU, 1 DU = 2.69 ×1016 molecules/cm2) for 2018 from the OMPS_NPP_NMSO2_PCA_L2 V2.0 product. Pixels with large cloud fractions (> 0.3) or solar zenith angles (> 65º) or near the edge of the swath (rows 1-2 and 35-36 out of 36 OMPS rows) or low sensitivities to SO2 (air mass factor, AMF < 0.3) have been excluded. In addition, days with large volcanic plumes from explosive eruptions have also been excluded. Areas having major anthropogenic SO2 sources (e.g., India, eastern China, the Middle East, and South Africa) or degassing volcanoes (e.g., Kilauea and Etna) can be identified from the map. https://docserver.gesdisc.eosdis.nasa.gov/public/project/MEaSUREs/Krotkov/OMPS_NPP_NMSO2_PCA_L2.v2.png

Tags

  • climate-indicators
  • human-dimensions
  • atmosphere
  • atmospheric-chemistry
  • natural-hazards
  • air-quality
  • paleoclimate-indicators
  • earth-science

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