Making NASA GES DISC Level 2 Data GIS Analysis Ready

There are many valuable data hosted by NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) for GIS applications in the areas of extreme weather events, climatic anomaly, and public health. However, using NASA Earth Science Data poses some challenges for GIS users. Many of these users are not experts in Earth Observation and have little knowledge about NASA's Earth science data. In the GIS community, GeoTiff is the most widely used raster format, whereas NASA's data is primarily in complex multidimensional netCDF and HDF formats. This complexity makes it difficult for GIS users, especially those who are unfamiliar with these formats. Although GIS software like ArcGIS has made progress in processing multidimensional netCDF data, certain issues still remain, particularly with level 2 data. In this study, we use TROPSpheric Monitoring instrument (TROPOMI) level 2 data as an example to demonstrate how to make such data GIS analysis ready. The process involves:

1. Creating a feature layer from the TROPOMI level 2 data.
2. Converting the feature layer to a gridded raster dataset.
3. Mosaicking gridded raster datasets into a raster dataset covering the entire desired extent.
4. Generating a symbology with a GIBS-specific style that aligns with the visual standards and requirements of GIBS.
5. Publishing image services.

By performing these preprocessing and transformation steps, NASA level 2 data can be made compatible and ready for use within GIS software for various spatial analysis and visualization tasks.