Interested in Incorporating NASA Data Into Your Decision Making Process but Don’t Know Where to Start? NASA’s Earthdata Health and Air Quality Data Pathfinder Will Get You on Your Way

NASA’s Earth science data collections provide a wealth of information to aid in our understanding of Earth processes and the data are all freely and openly available at earthdata.nasa.gov. Finding data on the Earthdata site can be complex, however, requiring expert knowledge of the datasets and the tools. To help novice users access, explore, and use NASA Earth science data, we have developed a series of data pathfinders.

Data pathfinders provide direct links to the most commonly used data sets and data products across NASA’s Earth science data collections, regardless of where they are archived. Pathfinders supplement Earthdata search capabilities by providing access to datasets through commonly used tools, providing different ways of visualizing the data, options for subsetting the data, and options for saving the data in different file formats.

This pathfinder is geared to air quality managers and public/environmental health managers as well as citizens interested in using NASA data to monitor air quality for a particular area and to correlate air quality to health conditions. Monitoring air quality provides a means to visualize trends, aid in forecasting events or the movement of pollutants, and responding to events, such as smoke from wildland fires. The data are grouped into several different components: aerosol optical depth (AOD) and correlating that to PM_2.5; trace gases, including detailed information on nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and ground level ozone; pollutant transport, including aerosol index, dust score, and surface reflectance; and public health.

Come see how you can more easily integrate NASA data into your health and air quality decision making.