Global Daily Snow Cover and Dust Radiative Forcing from MODIS

November 2023 to present data provides daily, 500-meter resolution measurements of snow and surface properties for 18 regions in North America, with coverage expanding to New Zealand and Chile from April 2025. This updated version of the MODSCAG and MODDRF algorithms from NASA JPL processes MODIS/Terra surface reflectance to estimate parameters like snow fraction and radiative forcing. The dataset is produced by NSIDCV0 and aims for eventual global coverage.

Use Cases

• Modeling snow albedo and melt rates using snow fraction and snow grain size columns.
• Assessing the impact of light. absorbing particles on snowpack via the radiative forcing and deltavis (visible snow darkening) parameters.
• Analyzing land cover composition in snow. dominated regions using vegetation, rock, ice, and shade fraction data.
• Tracking seasonal snow cover evolution and surface properties across specific geographic tiles over time.

Strengths

• Provides a multi. parameter suite including snow fraction, grain size, and radiative forcing derived from established MODSCAG and MODDRF algorithms.
• Offers daily temporal resolution and 500m spatial resolution from the MODIS/Terra sensor.
• Covers a significant time range from November 2023 onward for North America, with expanding global coverage.

Limitations

• Sources conflict on the number of covered North American regions (18 vs. 16).
• Exact row count, dataset size, and complete column list are unknown.
• Data is derived from near real. time sources but is not itself a near real. time product.

Provenance

Source

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) MODSCAG and MODDRF algorithms, processed by NSIDCV0.

Collection Method

Derived from NASA LANCE near real. time MODIS/Terra surface reflectance data (MOD09GA_NRT).

Time Range

November 2023 to present (North America); April 2025 to present (New Zealand, Chile).

Freshness

2026-03-12 23:16:17.168055

Geography

18 regions in North America, South Island of New Zealand, Andes mountains in Chile, with planned global coverage.