MODIS/Terra Snow Cover 5-Min L2 Swath 500, Version 5

Data Contributors HALL, DOROTHY K. SALOMONSON, VINCE V. RIGGS, GEORGE A. Parameters SNOW/ICE SNOW/ICE > LAKE ICE SNOW/ICE > RIVER ICE SNOW/ICE > SNOW COVER SNOW/ICE > SNOW COVER > FRACTIONAL SNOW COVER Instruments MODIS : MODERATE-RESOLUTION IMAGING SPECTRORADIOMETER

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The MODIS/Terra Snow Cover 5-Min L2 Swath 500m (MOD10_L2) data set contains snow cover and Quality Assessment (QA) data, latitudes and longitudes in compressed Hierarchical Data Format-Earth Observing System (HDF-EOS) format, and corresponding metadata. Latitude and longitude geolocation fields are at 5 km resolution while all other fields are at 500 m resolution. Version 5 (V005), the latest version of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data available has two separate snow fields. The first field, snow cover, classifies each cloud-free land or inland water body pixel as snow-covered or snow-free, the second field, fractional snow cover, provides the percent of snow cover within each pixel for land and inland water bodies. MODIS snow cover data are based on a snow mapping algorithm that employs a Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI) and other criteria tests.

Data are stored in HDF-EOS format, and are available from 24 February 2000 to present via FTP. Data can also be obtained in GeoTIFF format by ordering the data through the Data Pool.

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Data Citation

The following example shows how to cite the use of this data set in a publication. For more information, see our Use and Copyright Web page.

Hall, D. K., G. A. Riggs, and V. V. Salomonson. 2006. MODIS/Terra Snow Cover 5-Min L2 Swath 500. Version 5. [indicate subset used]. Boulder, Colorado USA: National Snow and Ice Data Center.

See Also

• The MODIS Project Home Web page.
• The MODIS Data Web page.
• MODIS Data at NSIDC
• Contact User Services