Aqua MODIS 1000-Meter Calibrated Radiance Swaths

MYD021KM provides 1000-meter calibrated at-aperture radiances for 29 spectral bands from the Aqua MODIS instrument. Each 5-minute swath granule has image dimensions of 2,030 lines by 1,354 samples. The dataset is produced by NASA's LAADS and the v7.0 collection's data record starts from July 4, 2002.

Use Cases

• Analyzing thermal emissive band radiances (bands 20-36) for sea surface temperature or fire detection models.
• Processing Visible and Near-Infrared (VNIR) band radiances (bands 8-19) for vegetation index calculations.
• Utilizing the unique handling of Band 26 data within the RSB Science Data Sets for atmospheric correction studies.
• Applying the provided latitude, longitude, and quality flag fields for geolocation and data quality filtering.
• Converting the per-pixel scaled integers to radiance values for time-series analysis of Earth's surface reflectance.

Strengths

• Provides data for 29 spectral bands across VNIR and thermal infrared wavelengths.
• Each 5-minute granule contains 2,030 lines by 1,354 samples of geolocated data.
• v7.0 product has undergone multiple reprocessing cycles over approximately 2.5 decades.

Limitations

• Specific row count, file size, and total temporal coverage beyond the start date are unknown.
• Data requires conversion from scaled integers to physical radiance units, adding preprocessing complexity.
• Aggregated 250-m and 500-m bands are generated via weighting functions, not native resolution.

Provenance

Source

NASA's Level-1 and Atmosphere Archive & Distribution System (LAADS).

Collection Method

Calibrated and geolocated radiances generated from MODIS Level-1A raw sensor counts aboard the Aqua satellite.

Time Range

Data record starts from July 4, 2002.

Freshness

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Geography

Global coverage from the Aqua satellite's sun-synchronous orbit.