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Full catalog/MCD19A1
MCD19A1·v006·dataset

How land reflects sunlight at each angle (MODIS, daily)

MODIS/Terra+Aqua Land Surface BRF Daily L2G Global 500m, 1km and 10km SIN Grid V006
land NASA LPCLOUD Level 2G HDF-EOS2
In plain English

What it measures. How land reflects sunlight when viewed and lit from different angles, cleaned of haze and atmospheric effects so it represents reflectance as if measured at the ground.

How it's made. Produced daily from the MODIS instruments on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites using an advanced atmospheric-correction method (MAIAC), gridded at 500 m to 10 km. Note: this version was retired in 2023 in favor of a newer one.

How & where you'd use it. A building-block product feeding studies of vegetation, surface brightness, and snow; specialists typically use it within higher-level analyses rather than on its own.

What's measured

LAND SURFACE › SURFACE RADIATIVE PROPERTIES › REFLECTANCECRYOSPHERE › GLACIERS/ICE SHEETS › FIRN › SNOW GRAIN SIZECLIMATE INDICATORS › CRYOSPHERIC INDICATORS › SNOW COVER

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2000-02-26 → 2023-02-17
  • Measured byTerra (MODIS) · Aqua (MODIS)
  • Processing levelLevel 2G
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsHDF-EOS2
  • StatusDEPRECATED

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

The MCD19A1 Version 6 data product was decommissioned on July 31, 2023. Users are encouraged to use the [MCD19A1 Version 6.1](https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MCD19A1.061) data product. The MCD19A1 Version 6 data product is a Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Terra and Aqua combined Multi-Angle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction (MAIAC) Land Surface Bidirectional Reflectance Factor (BRF) gridded Level 2 product produced daily at 500 meter (m) and 1 kilometer (km) pixel resolutions. The MCD19A1 product is corrected for atmospheric gases and aerosols using a new MAIAC algorithm that is based on a time series analysis and a combination of pixel- and image-based processing. The MODIS MAIAC Land Surface BRF products provide an estimate of the surface spectral reflectance as it would be measured at ground-level in the absence of atmospheric scattering or absorption. The MCD19A1 MAIAC Surface Reflectance data product includes 34 Science Dataset (SDS) layers: surface reflectance for bands 1-12, BRF uncertainty for bands 1-2, snow fraction, snow grain size, snow fit, Quality Assessment (QA) bits at 1 km, surface reflectance for bands 1-7 at 500 m, cosine of solar zenith angle, cosine of view zenith angle, relative azimuth angle, scattering angle, solar azimuth angle, view azimuth angle, glint angle, RossThick/Li-Sparse (RTLS) volumetric kernel, and RTLS geometric kernel at 5 km. A low-resolution browse image is also included showing surface reflectance band combination 1, 4, 3 created using a composite of all available orbits. Each SDS layer within each MCD19A1 Hierarchical Data Format 4 (HDF4) file contains a third dimension that represents the number of orbit overpasses. This factor could affect the total number of bands for each SDS layer. Known Issues * The longname in the internal metadata is provided incorrectly. The correct longname is "MODIS/Terra and Aqua MAIAC Land Surface BRF Daily L2G Global 500 m and 1 km SIN Grid." * Known issues are described on page 14 of the User Guide. * For complete information about known issues please refer to the [MODIS/VIIRS Land Quality Assessment website](https://landweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/knownissue?sensor=MODIS&sat=TerraAqua&as=6).

Get the data

mcd19a1_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="MCD19A1",
    version="006",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from LPCLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.