Daily Global Land Aerosol Optical Depth from MODIS Satellites

MCD19A2 Version 6 provides daily aerosol optical depth measurements at 1 km resolution from combined MODIS Terra and Aqua satellite data. The product includes layers for blue and green band AOD, uncertainty, column water vapor, smoke injection height, and viewing geometry. This version was decommissioned by LPCLOUD on July 31, 2023.

Use Cases

• Analyze daily spatial patterns of aerosol optical depth at 0.47 µm and 0.55 µm for climate studies.
• Estimate smoke injection height in meters above ground for wildfire plume dispersion modeling.
• Use column water vapor over land and clouds data for atmospheric moisture content analysis.
• Apply AOD QA and uncertainty layers for filtering and quality assessment in time-series analysis.
• Utilize cosine of solar zenith angle and relative azimuth angle for radiative transfer modeling.

Strengths

• Provides daily global coverage at 1 kilometer pixel resolution.
• Contains 14 distinct Science Dataset layers including AOD, uncertainty, and ancillary data.

Limitations

• The dataset version is decommissioned, indicating potential superseded or deprecated methods.
• Internal metadata contains an incorrect longname, requiring user verification.
• SDS layers contain a third dimension representing orbit overpasses, complicating band count interpretation.

Provenance

Source

LPCLOUD via NASA Earthdata MODIS Terra and Aqua satellite instruments.

Collection Method

Generated from the Multi-angle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction algorithm on MODIS data.

Time Range

Daily product.

Freshness

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Geography

Global land coverage on a 1 km SIN grid.