MODIS/Terra Clear Sky Radiance: 8-Day Global Composite at 25km

NASA's MODCSR_8 dataset provides composited clear-sky radiance and reflectance statistics from the MODIS/Terra satellite. It contains nine statistics for specific spectral bands, calculated separately for day and night from an eight-day rolling window, requiring valid data from at least four days. The data is global in coverage with a 25-kilometer resolution and is stored in Hierarchical Data Format (HDF).

Use Cases

• Analyzing clear-sky radiative trends based on composited radiance statistics for bands 1-7 and 17-36.
• Validating atmospheric models using observed minus calculated data for bands 20, 22-25, and 27-36.
• Studying land-water observation patterns from the included land vs. water observation counts.
• Monitoring diurnal cycles by comparing separately produced day and night statistics.

Strengths

• Data is produced by NASA, an authoritative source for satellite Earth observation.
• Compositing method requires valid clear-sky data from at least four of eight days, which likely reduces noise from transient cloud cover.
• Dataset provides global coverage at a consistent 25-kilometer spatial resolution.

Limitations

• Specific column names and dataset size are not documented across any source platform.
• The license is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' without explicit terms.
• The 'last updated' metadata from datagov (2026-04 10) appears to be a future date, indicating potential metadata errors.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Derived from composited daily (MODCSR_D) files from the MODIS/Terra satellite sensor.

Time Range

null

Freshness

2026-04-10 00:50:06.380520

Geography

Global