MODIS/Terra: Atmospheric Aerosol, Cloud, and Water Vapor Swath Data

MODIS/Terra ATML2 provides a 5-minute Level 2 swath product combining key atmospheric parameters at 5 km and 10 km scales. The product includes a subset of datasets from the full atmosphere suite, employing a 5x5 pixel sampling scheme for 1km native resolution data to retain statistical integrity for multi-day aggregations. Its significantly smaller granule file size compared to the combined individual L2 products makes it a practical means for users to develop custom research L3 algorithms.

Use Cases

• Calculating regional aerosol optical depth trends based on the 10 km aerosol datasets.
• Analyzing cloud microphysical properties like optical depth and top temperature using the native 5 km cloud datasets.
• Estimating atmospheric humidity indicators from the integrated water vapor datasets.
• Developing custom multi-day aggregated climate products using the statistically consistent 5x5 pixel sampling scheme.

Strengths

• Includes the full suite of quality assurance (QA) datasets, as noted in the C6 update.
• Employs a sampling scheme proven to retain statistical integrity for multi-day aggregations.
• File size is significantly smaller than the combined individual Level 2 products, enhancing practicality.

Limitations

• Specific column names and dataset size/row counts are not provided in any source.
• Conflicting license information: one source lists 'other-license-specified' while another lists 'None'.
• Metadata completeness is medium; key technical specifications like spatial/temporal resolution must be inferred from descriptions.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing from the MODIS instrument aboard the Terra platform.

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-04-10 according to datagov platform.

Geography

Global swath coverage.