Data Announcement

MODIS Swath, 500 m Gridded Snow Cover Data Now Available in Version 6

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

Data SetDOI
MODIS/Terra Snow Cover 5-Min L2 Swath500m (MOD10_L2)10.5067/MODIS/MOD10_L2.006
MODIS/Aqua Snow Cover 5-Min L2 Swath 500m (MYD10_L2)10.5067/MODIS/MYD10_L2.006
MODIS/Terra Snow Cover Daily L3 Global 500m Grid (MOD10A1)10.5067/MODIS/MOD10A1.006
MODIS/Aqua Snow Cover Daily L3 Global 500m Grid (MYD10A1)10.5067/MODIS/MYD10A1.006

In Version 6, Fractional Snow Cover has been replaced by Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI) snow cover. Binary Snow-Covered Area has been discontinued. Version 6 also incorporates a Quantitative Image Restoration technique that restores Aqua MODIS band 6 data to scientific quality. Thus the snow detection algorithms are now the same for Aqua and Terra. Additional changes are described in the Version Summary on each data set's Web page.

The entire time series for these data sets is being reprocessed to Version 6 by the data provider, MODIS Adaptive Processing System (MODAPS). Users should expect limited temporal coverage while reprocessing is ongoing. For additional details, see MODIS | V6 Reprocessing Plan

NSIDC will continue to distribute both Version 5 and Version 6 of the MODIS/Terra and MODIS/Aqua snow cover data sets until reprocessing is complete. To access these data, see MODIS Data Summaries.