Monthly Aggregated Water Vapor MODIS MCD19A2: Global Coverage 2000-2022

Monthly aggregated water vapor column data derived from MODIS MCD19A2 v061 satellite imagery, covering the entire globe from 2000 to 2022. The dataset provides mean and standard deviation values at a 1 km spatial resolution, with gaps filled using the TMWM algorithm and smoothed using the Whittaker method. It is provided by CERN and the European Commission and was last updated in August 2024.

Use Cases

• Water cycle modeling based on global, long-term water vapor column measurements.
• Vegetation mapping and analysis using near-infrared-derived atmospheric water content data.
• Soil moisture and land surface modeling informed by atmospheric water vapor time-series.
• Climate trend analysis leveraging the 22-year monthly aggregated time-series.

Strengths

• Covers a 22-year time span from 2000 to 2022, providing a long-term climate record.
• Global spatial coverage with a 1 km resolution, offering detailed geographic information.
• Includes quality assessment layers and counts of valid observations to indicate data reliability.
• Data processing explicitly removes cloudy pixels and fills gaps using the TMWM algorithm.

Limitations

• The dataset does not include data for Antarctica, limiting polar region analysis.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research and European Commission

Collection Method

Derived from MODIS MCD19A2 v061 satellite data using Google Earth Engine and processed with the Scikit-map Python package.

Time Range

2000 to 2022

Freshness

Last updated 2024-08-29.

Geography

Global coverage (excluding Antarctica), bounded by (-180.00000, -62.00081, 179.99994, 87.37000).