Hands-on NASA Workshop at the 2026 AGU Annual Meeting

Attending the 2026 AGU Annual Meeting? Join NASA PACE mission scientists for a workshop designed to get Earth scientists productive with PACE observations. It will provide practical training in accessing, processing, and analyzing data from PACE's unique instrument suite.

Workshop highlights:

• Direct instruction from PACE mission atmospheric and land scientists
• Practical Python workflows you can adapt for your research
• Coverage of PACE's unique hyperspectral and polarimetric capabilities
• Small workshop format for individualized assistance
• Comprehensive materials including documented code examples

The workshop combines conceptual overviews with practical exercises covering data discovery, access, visualization, and analysis across ocean, atmosphere, and land applications.

Workshop plan:

8:30 – 9:15 - Account setup, course overview, introductions
9:15 –10:00 - PACE mission overview
10:00–10:30 - Demo - Finding PACE products in NASA Earthdata
10:30–11:45 - Exercise - Accessing PACE data; file structure
11:45–12:00 - Q&A - Troubleshooting

12:00–1:00 - Break (lunch)

1:00– 1:45 - Demo - Data visualization principles with ocean color example
1:45– 2:30 - Exercise - Terrestrial: vegetation indices (legacy vs. hyperspectral)
2:30– 3:15 - Exercise - Atmospheric: aerosols and clouds

3:15– 3:30 - Break

3:30– 4:30 - Exercise - Advanced atmospheric applications: aerosols
4:30– 5:00 - Exercise - Atmospheric chemistry: nitrogen dioxide (NO2)
5:00– 5:30 - Wrap-up / Q&A

Learning outcomes:

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Discover and access PACE data (OCI, HARP2, SPEXone) via NASA Earthdata Cloud
2. Use Python (earthaccess) to search, authenticate, and analyze PACE data files
3. Explain PACE product levels (L1/L2/L3/L4), key file conventions, and typical variables and metadata
4. Visualize and interpret OCI hyperspectral data and HARP2/SPEXone multi-angle polarimetric measurements
5. Identify and work with basic ocean color products, including water-leaving reflectances and chlorophyll-a
6. Identify and work with atmospheric science products, including aerosols (HARP2/SPEXone), clouds (OCI/HARP2), and nitrogen dioxide (OCI)
7. Identify and work with OCI terrestrial products, including legacy vegetation indices (NDVI, EVI) and novel hyperspectral-enabled indices (CIRE, mARI, Car, PRI), and understand the value of OCI's daily global hyperspectral coverage for land science
8. Evaluate which PACE products are appropriate for specific research questions
9. Implement basic quality control and validation approaches for PACE data
10. Leave with reusable Python notebooks and scripts adaptable to their own research

Who should attend:

Researchers, graduate students, and professionals working in oceanography, atmospheric science, terrestrial ecology, or remote sensing who want to incorporate PACE data into their work.

Note: This event is part of the 2026 AGU Annual Meeting. For all AGU Meeting Scientific Workshops, a separate ticket must be purchased within the AGU registration system prior to the meeting.

AGU