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Full catalog/MIL3MCOD
MIL3MCOD·v001·dataset

How high and thick clouds are, monthly (MISR)

MISR Level 3 Cloud Top Height-Optical Depth Product covering a month V001
atmosphere NASA LARC_CLOUD Level 3 active HDF-EOS2
In plain English

What it measures. Monthly summaries of how high cloud tops are and how thick (optically dense) clouds are, worldwide.

How it's made. Produced from the MISR instrument on NASA's Terra satellite, which views each spot from nine different camera angles in four colors, with the multiple angles used to figure out cloud height; results are averaged into a monthly Level-3 product.

How & where you'd use it. Used to track seasonal and long-term trends in cloud amount, type, and height, which matters for understanding climate and how sunlight moves through the atmosphere.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS › CLOUD MICROPHYSICS › CLOUD OPTICAL DEPTH/THICKNESSATMOSPHERE › CLOUDS › CLOUD PROPERTIES › CLOUD TOP HEIGHT

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2000-03-01 → ongoing
  • Measured byTerra (MISR)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • 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

Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) is an instrument designed to view Earth with cameras pointed in 9 different directions. As the instrument flies overhead, each piece of Earth's surface below is successively imaged by all 9 cameras, in each of 4 wavelengths (blue, green, red, and near-infrared). The goal of MISR is to improve our understanding of the fate of sunlight in Earth environment, as well as distinguish different types of clouds, particles and surfaces. Specifically, MISR monitors the monthly, seasonal, and long-term trends in three areas: 1) amount and type of atmospheric particles (aerosols), including those formed by natural sources and by human activities; 2) amounts, types, and heights of clouds, and 3) distribution of land surface cover, including vegetation canopy structure. This file contains the public MISR Level 3 Cloud Top Height-Optical Depth Product covering a month.

Get the data

mil3mcod_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="MIL3MCOD",
    version="001",
    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 LARC_CLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.