Berkeley High Resolution (BEHR) OMI NO2 - Native pixels, monthly profiles

Laughner, Joshua, University of California, Berkeley, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8599-4555

Zhu, Qindan, University of California, Berkeley

Cohen, Ronald, University of California, Berkeley, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6617-7691

jlaughner@berkeley.edu, qindan_zhu@berkeley.edu, rccohen@berkeley.edu

Published May 12, 2018 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.6078/D1N086

Cite this dataset

Laughner, Joshua; Zhu, Qindan; Cohen, Ronald (2018). Berkeley High Resolution (BEHR) OMI NO2 - Native pixels, monthly profiles [Dataset]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.6078/D1N086

Abstract

The BEHR OMI NO₂ product reprocesses tropospheric NO₂ columns from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) satellite using high resolution a priori NO₂ profiles, surface reflectivity, and surface elevation data. This product uses NO₂ profiles for the day retrieved, simulated by the WRF-Chem model at 12 km spatial resolution. The use of high spatial resolution NO₂ profiles has been shown to better resolve urban/rural differences in NO₂ column densities, and the use of day-to-day (rather than monthly average) profiles is especially important in applications that preferentially select observations upwind or downwind of a NO_x source. Given the computational cost of simulating daily 12 km resolution profiles over the continental US and the challenge of simulating individual lightning events accuractly, we still provide a product using monthly average NO₂ profiles.

Methods

The methods for the BEHR product are described in detail in Laughner et al. (in prep).

Usage notes

Each month of BEHR data is stored as a .tar.gz file (i.e. a tar archive compressed with gzip). These can be decompressed using 7zip or (on Mac/Linux) the command "tar -xzvf <filename>", e.g. "tar -xzvf OMI_BEHR-MONTHLY_US_v3-0A_200501.tar.gz" will expand OMI_BEHR-MONTHLY_US_v3-0A_200501.tar.gz

In addition to downloading the full dataset or manually downloading individual files, a Python program is available at https://github.com/CohenBerkeleyLab/BEHRDownloader that can perform bulk downloads of a subset of the files, as well as automatically uncompress the tar files. See the Readme in that repo for further usage information.

For details on best practices for using the BEHR data, see the user guide PDF included in this repository.

Funding

National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Award: NNX14AK89H

National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Award: NNX15AE37G

Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Award: SV3-83019