MCD43A4: Daily Nadir BRDF-Adjusted Reflectance at 500m Global Scale

Daily global land surface reflectance data produced by NASA using 16 days of Terra and Aqua MODIS observations at 500-meter resolution. The MCD43A4 Version 6 product provides Nadir BRDF-Adjusted Reflectance (NBAR) for MODIS bands 1-7, with data temporally weighted to the ninth day of the 16-day period. This version was decommissioned on July 31, 2023, and users are directed to the updated Version 6.1.

Use Cases

• Monitoring land surface change based on daily, angle-corrected reflectance.
• Modeling surface energy balance based on albedo and reflectance data.
• Assessing vegetation health and phenology based on multi-spectral bands.
• Calibrating or validating other satellite products based on the stable NBAR product.

Strengths

• Data is produced daily with a 500-meter spatial resolution.
• Uses 16 days of observations from two satellite platforms (Terra and Aqua) for stability.
• View angle effects are removed, resulting in a consistent Nadir BRDF-Adjusted Reflectance product.

Limitations

• This Version 6 product is decommissioned; known issues over arid bright surfaces are corrected in Version 6.1.
• Row count and sample data are unavailable, limiting suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Produced daily from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data on Terra and Aqua satellites.

Time Range

Daily temporal coverage, with observations weighted to the ninth day of a 16-day period.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 23:26:03.568820; freshness should be verified as the data version is deprecated.

Geography

Global