Full catalog/MICASA_FLUX_M
MICASA_FLUX_M·v1·dataset

Monthly carbon taken up, released and burned by land

MiCASA Monthly NPP Rh ATMC NEE FIRE FUEL Fluxes 0.1 degree x 0.1 degree
atmosphere NASA GES_DISC Level 4
In plain English

What it measures. Monthly maps of how carbon moves through the land: how much plants take up, how much soils and plants release, the net balance, and how much is given off by fires and fuel burning.

How it's made. Produced by the MiCASA model, a revised version of an established carbon model, fed by weather data and several MODIS satellite products such as land cover, burned area, and surface reflectance.

How & where you'd use it. Helps scientists understand the global carbon cycle, where land is absorbing or releasing carbon, and the role of fires, supporting climate and emissions research.

What's measured

CLIMATE INDICATORS › CARBON FLUX

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2001-01-01 → 2024-12-31
  • Measured byCASA-GFED3-V3 (NOT APPLICABLE)
  • Processing levelLevel 4
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 179, 90
  • StatusCOMPLETE

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

MiCASA is an extensive revision of CASA-GFED3. CASA-GFED3 derives from Potter et al. (1993), diverging in development since Randerson et al. (1996). CASA is a light use efficiency model: NPP is expressed as the product of photosynthetically active solar radiation, a light use efficiency parameter, scalars that capture temperature and moisture limitations, and fractional absorption of photosynthetically active radiation (fPAR) by the vegetation canopy derived from satellite data. Fire parameterization was incorporated into the model by van der Werf et al. (2004) leading to CASA-GFED3 after several revisions (van der Werf et al., 2006, 2010). Development of the GFED module has continued, now at GFED5 (Chen et al., 2023) with less focus on the CASA module. MiCASA diverges from GFED development at version 3, although future reconciliation is possible. Input datasets include air temperature, precipitation, incident solar radiation, a soil classification map, and several satellite derived products. These products are primarily based on Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Terra and Aqua combined datasets including land cover classification (MCD12Q1), burned area (MCD64A1), Nadir BRDF-Adjusted Reflectance (NBAR; MCD43A4), from which fPAR is derived, and tree/herbaceous/bare vegetated fractions from Terra only (MOD44B). Emissions due to fire and burning of coarse woody debris (fuel wood) are estimated separately.

Get the data

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="MICASA_FLUX_M",
    version="1",
    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 GES_DISC
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.