NASA’s Land Atmosphere Near-Real Time Capability for Earth observation (LANCE), in collaboration with ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA’s Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Service Center (GES DISC), recently made available near real-time (NRT) products to further support the air quality community. These products come from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) aboard the Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor (S5P) satellite, one of ESA's Sentinel mission family.
TROPOMI provides measurements of hyperspectral radiances from multiple portions of the electromagnetic spectrum including the ultraviolet and visible portion (UV-VIS 270-495 nm); the near infrared portion (NIR 675-775 nm); and the shortwave infrared portion (SWIR 2305-2385 nm). These measurements are then used to retrieve aerosol properties and atmospheric composition.
Eleven products are available through LANCE including radiances, aerosol index, carbon monoxide (CO) column, tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone tropospheric column, total ozone column, and sulphur dioxide (SO2). These are available within 30 to 180 minutes of satellite observation (with the exception of the ozone tropospheric column product, which is available within one day of satellite observation).
NRT data from TROPOMI are used in multiple ways by the community. The data support the forecasts of volcanic hazards for aviation, smoke plumes (such as plumes recently observed across the United States), and atmospheric radiation calculations for numerical weather prediction. TROPOMI’s hyperspectral nature allows users to not only determine the extent of plumes, but also to derive information on the plume’s height.
The provision of NRT TROPOMI products through LANCE was requested by long-time LANCE users and is timely given the decommissioning of NASA’s Aura satellite. Aura carries the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), for example, and the aerosol index from OMI is used in aerosol analyses to improve their accuracy over bright surfaces. The availability of TROPOMI products will enable the continuation of these analyses post-Aura. The NRT products are intended for time sensitive applications. For research applications, users should use the standard science quality products.
