•  On Wednesday, June 7, from 6:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. (US Mountain Time), the following data collections may not be available due to planned system maintenance: ASO, AMSR Unified, AMSR-E, Aquarius, High Mountain Asia, IceBridge, ICESat/GLAS, ICESat-2, LVIS, MEaSUREs, MODIS, Nimbus, SMAP, SnowEx, SSM/I-SSMIS and VIIRS.

  • As of February 25th, 2023, C6 Forward processing of Terra and Aqua MODIS Land data products has been discontinued, due to calibration issues that were discovered after the completion of the C6 reprocessing. The Collection 6.1 (C61) corrects these calibration issues and has a number of product specific improvements and enhancements that are listed in the C61 change document here. Given the improved performance and calibration of C61, users are requested to switch to C61 for all of their MODIS land data needs. NSIDC will retain the C6 historical land data products for a further period of 6 months, following this decommissioning of the C6 forward processing, and will decommission all C6 land data products after the expiry of this 6-month retention period.

MODIS/Terra Snow Cover 8-Day L3 Global 500m SIN Grid, Version 61 (MOD10A2)
Data set:
MOD10A2
This is the most recent version of these data.
Version Summary
1. The low visible reflectance screen for snow cover using bands 2 and 4 was lowered from 0.10 to 0.07.
2. Cloud mask algorithm flags are set for 'probably cloudy' and 'probably clear' sky conditions in the algorithm flags QA data set.

Overview

This global Level-3 (L3) data set provides the maximum snow cover extent observed over an eight-day period within 10° x 10° MODIS sinusoidal grid tiles. Tiles are generated by compositing 500 m observations from the 'MODIS/Terra Snow Cover Daily L3 Global 500m Grid' data set (DOI:10.5067/MODIS/MOD10A1.061). A bit flag index is used to track the eight-day snow/no-snow chronology for each 500 m cell. The terms "Version 61" and "Collection 6.1" are used interchangeably in reference to this release of MODIS data.
Parameter(s):
SNOW COVER
Platform(s):
Terra
Sensor(s):
MODIS
Data Format(s):
HDF-EOS2
Temporal Coverage:
18 February 2000 to present
Temporal Resolution:
8 day
Spatial Resolution:
500 m
500 m
Spatial Coverage:
N:
90
S:
-90
E:
180
W:
-180
Yellow areas on the map below indicate the spatial coverage for this data set.

Data Access & Tools

A free NASA Earthdata Login account is required to access these data. Learn More

Help Articles

Getting started

For the snow cover and sea ice products, users can use MODIS Collections 6 and 6.1 together.
The lag time between observations and availability of MODIS products is only a few days. Lag time may be extended due to satellite maneuvers and extra quality assurance required for the geolocation data after the maneuver.
This short article describes the customization services available for ICESat-2 data using Earthdata Search
The Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI) snow cover is an index that is related to the presence of snow in a pixel and is a more accurate description of snow detection as compared to Fractional Snow Cover (FSC). Snow typically has very high visible (VIS) reflectance and very low reflectance in

How To

Many NSIDC DAAC data sets can be accessed using the NSIDC DAAC's Data Access Tool. This tool provides the ability to search and filter data with spatial and temporal constraints using a map-based interface. Users have the option to
To convert HDF5 files into binary format you will need to use the h5dump utility, which is part of the HDF5 distribution available from the HDF Group. How you install HDF5 depends on your operating system.
Data subscriptions are available for select NSIDC DAAC data collections. Once signed up, the subscription service automatically sends you new data as they are delivered from active NASA satellite missions.
All data from the NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC) can be accessed directly from our HTTPS file system, using wget or curl. Basic command line instructions are provided in the article below. 
NASA Earthdata Search is a map-based interface where a user can search for Earth science data, filter results based on spatial and temporal constraints, and order data with customizations including re-formatting, re-projecting, and spatial and parameter subsetting.
NASA Worldview is a map interface that allows users to interactively browse imagery, create visualizations, and download the underlying data.
NASA's Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS) provides up to date, full resolution imagery for selected NSIDC DAAC data sets.