TOMSEPL3dref: Daily Global Surface Reflectivity Grid

Daily global gridded data from the Earth Probe Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) Version 8 provides Lambertian effective surface reflectivity values, corrected for Rayleigh scattering. The data are mapped to a global grid of 180 x 288 cells with a lat-long resolution of 1.00 x 1.25 degrees and are stored in ASCII format. The data were produced by the Laboratory for Atmospheres at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Use Cases

• Analyzing surface albedo variations based on Lambertian effective surface reflectivity values.
• Validating atmospheric correction models using Rayleigh-corrected reflectivity data.
• Studying global spatial patterns of reflectivity on a 1.00 x 1.25 degree grid.
• Supporting ozone retrieval algorithms by providing surface reflectivity inputs.

Strengths

• Provides a consistent global spatial grid of 51,840 cells (180 x 288).
• Data is processed to a specific scientific standard (Version 8, Rayleigh corrected).
• Originates from an authoritative source (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 614).

Limitations

• Conflicting metadata: last update dates differ significantly (2005 vs. 2026) across platforms.
• Column names and exact data structure are not specified in the provided metadata.
• The dataset's temporal coverage (start and end dates) is not provided.

Provenance

Source

Laboratory for Atmospheres, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (Code 614).

Collection Method

Collected by the Earth Probe (EP) Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) instrument.

Freshness

2026-04-09 21:44:35.758445 (from datagov, but conflicts with older nasa_earthdata date)

Geography

Global, gridded to 1.00 x 1.25 degree lat-long resolution.