MYD09GQ V006: Aqua MODIS Daily Surface Reflectance at 250m

MYD09GQ Version 6 provides daily surface spectral reflectance estimates for two 250-meter bands from the Aqua MODIS sensor, corrected for atmospheric gases, aerosols, and Rayleigh scattering. The product includes a Quality Assurance layer and five observation layers and is intended for use with the 500-meter MYD09GA product for geometry information. This version was decommissioned on July 31, 2023, with users directed to the corrected Version 6.1.

Use Cases

• Monitoring vegetation health and calculating indices based on atmospherically corrected 250-meter reflectance bands.
• Assessing aerosol loading and atmospheric conditions using the quality assurance and observation layers.
• Providing input data for downstream products like BRDF/Albedo (MCD43) and Vegetation Indices (MOD13/MYD13).
• Studying land surface changes over time using the daily global time-series data.

Strengths

• Provides global daily coverage at a 250-meter spatial resolution.
• Includes atmospheric correction for gases, aerosols, and Rayleigh scattering.
• Cross-platform presence on NASA Earthdata and Data.gov signals its established use in the scientific community.

Limitations

• The dataset is deprecated (decommissioned July 31, 2023) due to known issues, such as incorrect high-aerosol flagging over bright surfaces.
• Key metadata like row count, file size, and a complete column list is unavailable across all sources.
• Conflicting 'last updated' dates (2026-04-10 vs 2023-02-26) create uncertainty about metadata freshness.

Provenance

Source

NASA LPCLOUD (Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center).

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing from the Aqua MODIS instrument.

Time Range

Coverage spans the Aqua MODIS mission lifetime up to the product's decommissioning in July 2023.

Freshness

Last updated dates conflict: one source lists 2026-04-10, another lists 2023-02-26.

Geography

Global coverage on a sinusoidal (SIN) grid.