MCD19A2: Daily Global Land Aerosol Optical Depth at 1km Resolution

MODIS/Terra and Aqua combined MAIAC Land Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) gridded Level 2 product produced daily at 1 kilometer pixel resolution. The dataset, produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, contains multiple Science Dataset layers including AOD at blue and green bands, uncertainty, water vapor, and smoke injection height. This Version 6 product was decommissioned on July 31, 2023, with users encouraged to use the updated Version 6.1.

Use Cases

• Modeling atmospheric aerosol transport based on daily AOD measurements.
• Analyzing air quality and pollution events using smoke injection height and AOD uncertainty layers.
• Studying aerosol-cloud interactions using column water vapor data over land and clouds.
• Calibrating surface reflectance models using the atmospheric properties and view geometry data.

Strengths

• Provides daily global coverage at 1 kilometer spatial resolution.
• Combines data from both MODIS Terra and Aqua satellites for improved temporal sampling.
• Contains multiple scientific layers including AOD at 0.47 µm and 0.55 µm, uncertainty, and ancillary geometry data.

Limitations

• This specific Version 6 product was decommissioned on July 31, 2023, indicating it is not the current version.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The description notes known issues with metadata and refers to external documentation for complete details.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing data from MODIS instruments on Terra and Aqua platforms, processed with the MAIAC algorithm.

Time Range

Daily product, specific temporal coverage is not provided.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 23:22:46.504167; freshness should be verified as the data product version is deprecated.

Geography

Global coverage on a sinusoidal (SIN) grid.