Calibrated raw imagery, near real-time (Terra, 1 km)
What it measures. How much light and heat the sensor recorded across 36 wavelength bands, from visible to infrared, each pinned to a location. This is the standard near-real-time version, with extra correction applied to certain infrared bands.
How it's made. Produced from the MODIS instrument on NASA's Terra satellite by converting raw scans into calibrated, geolocated energy readings.
How & where you'd use it. A core building-block product used mainly as the starting point for higher-level maps (fires, clouds, land surface) rather than directly by most users.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2017-10-11 → ongoing
- Measured byTERRA (MODIS)
- Processing levelLevel 1B
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
- FormatsHDF-EOS
- StatusACTIVE
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 MODIS Level 1B Near Real Time (NRT) data set contains calibrated and geolocated at-aperture radiances for 36 discrete bands located in the 0.4 to 14.4 micron region of electromagentic spectrum. These data are generated from the MODIS Level 1A scans of raw radiance and in the process converted to geophysical units of W/(m^2 um sr). Additional data are provided including quality flags, error estimates and calibration data. Visible, shortwave infrared, and near infrared measurements are only made during the daytime (except band 26), while radiances for the thermal infrared region (bands 20-25, 27-36) are measured continuously. The Shortname for this product is MOD021KM and is stored in the Earth Observing System Hierarchical Data Format (HDF-EOS). A typical file size would be approximately 110 MB (a day granule around 150MB and a night granule around 70 MB). In this new version (Collection 6.1) of MOD021KM, an advanced technique is introduced to mitigate the crosstalk contamination issue among the LWIR PV bands using data from lunar calibration events. The electronic crosstalk contamination issue in the Terra long-wave infrared photovoltaic (LWIR PV) bands (27 -30), has existed since the beginning of the mission but become more noticeable during later half of the mission. The electronic crosstalk is where signal from each of the detectors among the LWIR PV bands can leak to the other detectors, producing a false signal contribution. This contamination has had a noticeable effect on the MODIS science products since 2010 for band 27, and since 2012 for bands 28 and 29. Environmental information derived from MODIS L1B measurements will offer a comprehensive and unprecedented look at terrestrial, atmospheric, and ocean phenomenology for a wide and diverse community of users throughout the world. See the MODIS Characterization Support Team webpage for more C6 product information at: http://mcst.gsfc.nasa.gov/l1b/product-information or visit Science Team homepage at: http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/dataprod/
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="MOD021KM",
version="6.1NRT",
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 LANCEMODISBrowsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.