CAMEL: Monthly Global Land Emissivity Covariances, 2003-2021

NASA's CAMEL dataset provides a 19-year monthly climatology of land surface emissivity covariances at 0.25-degree resolution. The CAM5K30COVCLIM product includes mean and variance data for 416 spectral points, derived from combined ASTER and MODIS satellite observations. This data suite is part of the MEaSUREs program to create long-term Earth system data records for research.

Use Cases

• Modeling land surface temperature and energy budgets based on spectral emissivity data.
• Analyzing long-term trends in land surface properties based on the 19-year monthly climatology.
• Improving atmospheric correction algorithms for satellite data based on emissivity covariance matrices.
• Studying seasonal variability in snow, ice, and vegetation cover based on spectral frequency data.

Strengths

• 19 years of monthly data from 2003 through 2021 provides a long-term climatology.
• Global coverage at 0.25-degree (~25 km) spatial resolution.
• Includes data for 416 spectral points, suggesting detailed spectral information.
• Derived from the combined ASTER and MODIS satellite sensor suite.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and total dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing data from the ASTER and MODIS instruments, processed into a monthly covariances climatology.

Time Range

2003 through 2021

Freshness

Last updated 2026 -03-13 03:26:16.747094; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global