MODIS/Terra L1B: Calibrated Radiances at 500m Resolution

MODIS/Terra Calibrated Radiances 5Min L1B Swath 500m contains calibrated, geolocated at-aperture radiances for 7 discrete bands in the 0.45 to 2.20 micron region. Data includes quality flags, error estimates, and calibration data, with visible and shortwave infrared measurements taken during daytime and thermal infrared measured continuously. The product provides global coverage every one to two days from a 705 km orbit, with each 5-minute granule containing a scene built from 203 scans.

Use Cases

• Atmospheric property retrieval based on calibrated radiance measurements across 7 spectral bands.
• Land surface monitoring using visible and shortwave infrared data aggregated to a 500m spatial scale.
• Time-series analysis of environmental changes leveraging the dataset's one-to-two day global revisit period.
• Sensor calibration and validation using the provided quality flags and error estimates.
• Geolocation and co-registration studies utilizing the aggregated 250m and 500m band data.

Strengths

• Provides calibrated radiance data in geophysical units (W/(m^2 um sr)), essential for quantitative analysis.
• Offers global coverage every one to two days due to a 2330 km orbital swath width.
• Includes ancillary data such as quality flags and error estimates for each measurement.

Limitations

• Spatial resolution degrades from 500 m at nadir to approximately 2.4 km at scan extremes, though overlapping swaths improve this to about 1 km.
• Column names and specific data structure are not provided in the available metadata.
• License information is conflicting between sources (CC-BY-4.0 vs. 'other-license-specified').

Provenance

Source

NASA/MODIS instrument aboard the Terra satellite.

Collection Method

Generated from MODIS Level 1A scans of raw radiance, converted to geophysical units.

Freshness

2026-04-10 00:48:51.799862

Geography

Global