TOMSN7L3dref: Daily Global UV Surface Reflectivity Grid

Nimbus-7 satellite data provides a daily global grid of Lambertian effective surface reflectivity, corrected for Rayleigh scattering, at a 1.00 x 1.25-degree resolution. This dataset supports long-term studies of atmospheric radiation and surface albedo. Its ASCII format and consistent global grid facilitate climate model validation and trend analysis.

Use Cases

• Validating climate model surface reflectance parameterizations based on the global gridded reflectivity values.
• Analyzing long-term trends in surface UV albedo for climate change research using the daily time series.
• Studying the spatial distribution of surface reflectivity for atmospheric correction of other satellite data.
• Assessing seasonal and interannual variability in Earth's radiation budget from the Rayleigh-corrected reflectivity data.

Strengths

• Provides a consistent global spatial grid of 180 x 288 cells, enabling uniform analysis.
• Data is produced by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Laboratory for Atmospheres, indicating authoritative provenance.
• Contains daily temporal resolution, supporting analysis of short-term variability.

Limitations

• Metadata conflicts exist: one platform lists a last update in 2026, while another indicates data from 1993, creating uncertainty about freshness.
• Column names and exact data size are not provided, limiting immediate understanding of the data structure.
• The dataset is stored in ASCII format, which may be less efficient for large-scale analysis compared to binary formats.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Collected by the Nimbus-7 Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) satellite instrument.

Freshness

2026-04-09 21:31:27.895479

Geography

Global, mapped to a 1.00 x 1.25-degree latitude/longitude grid.