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

Data Contributors HALL, DOROTHY K. SALOMONSON, VINCE V. RIGGS, GEORGE A. Parameters LAKE ICE > Fractional Snow Cover SNOW COVER > Fractional Snow Cover Instruments MODIS : MODERATE-RESOLUTION IMAGING SPECTRORADIOMETER SPECTRORADIOMETERS

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The MODIS/Aqua Snow Cover 5-Min L2 Swath 500m (MYD10_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 4 July 2002 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. List the principal investigators, year of data set release, data set title and version number, dates of the data you used (for example, December 2003 to March 2004), publisher: NSIDC, and digital media.

Hall, Dorothy K., George A. Riggs, and Vincent V. Salomonson. 2007, updated daily. MODIS/Aqua Snow Cover 5-min L2 Swath 500m V005, [list the dates of the data used]. Boulder, Colorado USA: National Snow and Ice Data Center. Digital media.

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See Also

• MODIS Data at NSIDC
• Contact User Services