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Full catalog/MCD19A2
MCD19A2·v061·dataset

Haze, dust and smoke over land each day (Terra+Aqua, 1 km)

MODIS/Terra+Aqua Land Aerosol Optical Depth Daily L2G Global 1km SIN Grid V061
atmosphere NASA LPCLOUD Level 2G active HDF-EOS2
In plain English

What it measures. A daily map of how hazy the air is over land, capturing dust, smoke, and other tiny airborne particles (called aerosol optical depth). It also includes related details like water vapor in the air column and the height that smoke gets lofted to.

How it's made. Built each day from the MODIS instruments on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites, combined and processed onto a 1-kilometer grid.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for tracking wildfire smoke and dust storms, studying air quality, and as a correction input for making cleaner maps of the land surface.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › AEROSOLS › AEROSOL OPTICAL DEPTH/THICKNESS

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2000-02-24 → ongoing
  • Measured byTerra (MODIS) · Aqua (MODIS)
  • Processing levelLevel 2G
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsHDF-EOS2
  • StatusACTIVE

What you can do with it

  • Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
  • Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
  • Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description

The MCD19A2 Version 6.1 data product is a Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Terra and Aqua combined Multi-angle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction (MAIAC) Land Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) gridded Level 2 product produced daily at 1 kilometer (km) pixel resolution. The MCD19A2 product provides the atmospheric properties and view geometry used to calculate the MAIAC Land Surface Bidirectional Reflectance Factor (BRF) or surface reflectance, MCD19A1 product. The MCD19A2 AOD data product contains the following Science Dataset (SDS) layers: blue band AOD at 0.47 µm, green band AOD at 0.55 µm, AOD uncertainty, fine mode fraction over water, column water vapor over land and clouds (in cm), smoke injection height (m above ground), AOD QA, AOD model at 1km, cosine of solar zenith angle, cosine of view zenith angle, relative azimuth angle, scattering angle, and glint angle at 5km. A low-resolution browse image is also included showing AOD of the blue band at 0.47 µm created using a composite of all available orbits. Each SDS layer within each MCD19A2 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 * Known issues are described in Section 6 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=61). * Users should be aware that they may see a dip in AOD values for the first 5 months of 2022. A fix is planned to be implemented in Collection 7.

Get the data

mcd19a2_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="MCD19A2",
    version="061",
    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.