This repository provides a python script to automatically download data from AERONET Web Data Service Help platform.
The Dataset includes AERONET Aerosol Optical Depth - Version 3 - level1.5 or level2.0 data (direct sun algorithm) and AERONET inversion data.
To use this script, you need pandas and python-wget libraries. You can install these libraries the usual way:
pip install pandas wget
In the case of Anaconda, you need to install the python-wget package from conda-forge, because the wget package will actually give you an executable on the command line, not the python module. Hence:
conda install -c conda-forge python-wget
conda install pandas
After downloading this package and installing the required libraries, you need to run the dad.py script to download AERONET data. You can do that on the command line:
python3 dad.py
Or in an interactive sesion, for instance using ipython:
In [1]: run dad.py
The script will read all the input files in the 00-input_dir/ folder, and download all the AERONET products listed in each file. The files, exactly as downloaded from the AERONET website, are saved in the 00-rawdata/ folder.
You can set up one input file for each station that you are interested, and run the script only once. See the next section to understand how to modify the input file for your needs. The example distributed in this repository is for the station in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
The input file is contained in folder 00-input_dir . It is a csv file with all necessary information for downloading products from AERONET database. The input file contain 11 columns with the following fields:
- year_initial: Initial year for data retrieval
- month_initial: Initial month for data retrieval
- day_initial: Initial day for data retrieval
- year_final: End year for data retrieval
- month_final: End month for data retrieval
- day_final: end day for data retrieval
- site: The station name to be downloaded (see next section)
- level - is the level of AERONET data, ex: 20 for level2.0 data or 15 for level1.5 data
- avg - is the data format average - fo all points use AVG=10 and for daily average use AVG=20
- products: is the data products to be downloaded
- siz - Size distribution
- rin - Refractive indicies (real and imaginary)
- cad - Coincident AOT data with almucantar retrieval
- vol - Volume concentration, volume mean radius, effective radius and standard deviation
- tab - AOD absorption
- aod - AOD extinction
- ssa - Single scattering albedo
- asy - Asymmetry factor
- frc - Radiative Forcing
- lid - Lidar and Depolarization Ratios
- flx - Spectral flux
- pfn - Phase function
- pfncoarse - coarse mode phase functions
- pfnfine - fine mode phase functions
- directsun - Aerosol Optical Depth from AERONET direct sun measurements
- download - use "on" to turn it on download or "off" to turn it off the download
The sample input file was prepared for downloading data from the AERONET station in Sao Paulo, Brazil. You can find this file here: input1_sao_paulo.csv,
Important points:
-
The AERONET Web Data Service is case sensitive, which means you need to use "Sao_Paulo" and not "sao_paulo" or "SAO_PAULO".
-
If you try to download data from a station that does not exist (e.g., wrong name), the AERONET Web Data Service will return data for all stations. The download would never finish (too much data)!!!
You should always double-check the site name, which you can find on the AERONET website. We provide a list here, but please understand that this might not be up-do-date: aeronet_locations_v3
More information about data, products and how to download, please, check the AERONET Web Data Service Help