All MODIS Snow Cover Data Sets Now Available in Version 6

The final four MODIS snow cover data sets are now available in Version 6 at the NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed Active Archive Center (NSIDC DAAC):

• MODIS/Terra Snow Cover 8-Day L3 Global 0.05Deg CMG (MOD10C2). DOI: 10.5067/MODIS/MOD10C2.006
• MODIS/Aqua Snow Cover 8-Day L3 Global 0.05Deg CMG (MYD10C2). DOI: 10.5067/MODIS/MYD10C2.006
• MODIS/Terra Snow Cover Monthly L3 Global 0.05Deg CMG (MOD10CM). DOI: 10.5067/MODIS/MOD10CM.006
• MODIS/Aqua Snow Cover Monthly L3 Global 0.05Deg CMG (MYD10CM). DOI: 10.5067/MODIS/MYD10CM.006

In Version 6, Fractional Snow Cover previously used as input has been replaced by Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI) snow cover. In addition, the Confidence Index in the 8-day data sets has been discontinued in favor of a new Clear Index, that reports the percentage of 500 m non-cloud cells used to estimate snow cover in each Climate Modeling Grid (CMG) cell.

Also new for Version 6, a Quantitative Image Restoration technique has been utilized to restore Aqua MODIS band 6 data to scientific quality, allowing the same snow detection algorithm to be applied to both Aqua and Terra. Additional changes are described in the Version Summary on each data set’s Web page.

Reprocessing is now complete for all MODIS snow cover and sea ice data sets at NSIDC. Forward-processing will continue for all products in both Version 6 and Version 5 through the end of 2016. Version 5 forward-processing will be discontinued on 31 December, 2016.

To obtain MODIS snow cover and sea ice data, visit the MODIS Data Summaries page.