About Our Training Program


The STAR Aerosols and Atmospheric Composition Science Team conducts training courses on aerosol, fire, and trace gas satellite products from ABI, VIIRS, TROPOMI & TEMPO.

The objectives of the training program are to increase access to the satellite products and promote their proper use in air quality applications in operations & research.

Using Python, training participants learn to work with satellite data from start to finish for a recent smoke, blowing dust, or urban pollution event.

Current topics include:

  • Search online satellite data archives & download or stream files
  • Open satellite data files (netCDF format), read metadata, and understand data variables
  • Process and visualize satellite data

This website contains the resources developed for the training program:

  • Training course agendas (Training Courses section)
  • Instructions on how to download/install & set up Anaconda, Jupyter Notebook, and Panoply (Software Instructions section)
  • Python tutorials for working with satellite data files (Python Tutorials section)
  • Information users need to know about satellite products, data availablity, and data access (Satellite Data section)
  • Definitions of satellites, sensors, products, and terminology (Glossary)
  • Resources for satellite remote sensing and Python programming (References Links section)