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Full catalog/MOD02HKM
MOD02HKM·v7·dataset

Calibrated raw satellite imagery (Terra, 500 m)

MODIS/Terra Calibrated Radiances 5-Min L1B Swath 500m V7
land NASA LAADS Level 1B active NetCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. Calibrated raw satellite imagery, recording how much light and energy the sensor detected (radiance) in 5 wavelength bands from blue through shortwave infrared, at 500-meter detail.

How it's made. Produced from the MODIS sensor on NASA's Terra satellite by converting raw sensor counts into calibrated, geolocated radiance values, every 5 minutes of orbit.

How & where you'd use it. A foundational building-block input that feeds countless higher-level products (like vegetation, fire, and land-cover maps); most people use it indirectly through those derived products.

What's measured

SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › INFRARED RADIANCESPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › INFRARED WAVELENGTHS › REFLECTED INFRAREDSPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › VISIBLE WAVELENGTHS › VISIBLE RADIANCE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2000-02-24 → ongoing
  • Measured byTerra (MODIS)
  • Processing levelLevel 1B
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsNetCDF-4
  • 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 Terra MODIS (Moderate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) Level-1B (L1B) product includes calibrated and geolocated at-aperture radiances for 36 bands generated from MODIS Level-1A raw sensor counts. The radiances are provided in watts/m2/micrometer (µm)/steradian. The Aqua MODIS L1B product is a set of three datasets (MOD02QKM, MOD02HKM, and MOD021KM) that are produced to address the three spatial-resolution variations: 250 m, 500 m, and 1000 m. This landing page describes the 500-meter product with a short-name MOD02HKM. It provides 500-m calibrated radiances for the following 5 bands: <html> <body> <table style="width:50%"> <tr> <th>Band</th> <th>Wavelength</th> </tr> <tr> <td>Band 3 (Blue)</td> <td>0.459–0.479 µm</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Band 4 (Green)</td> <td>0.545–0.565 µm</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Band 5 (Near-Infrared (NIR))</td> <td>1.230–0.250 µm</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Band 6 (Shortwave Infrared (SWIR))</td> <td>0.628–1.652 µm</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Band 7 (SWIR)</td> <td>2.105–2.155 µm</td> </tr> </table> </body> </html> <br> Each 500-m band has 20 detectors in the along-track direction. The MOD02HKM product contains the following five Science Data Sets (SDS) besides geolocation fields for latitude and longitude, quality flags, error estimates, etc. <html> <body> <table> <tr> <th>SDS Variable</th> <th>Long-name</th> </tr> <tr> <td>EV_250_Aggr500_RefSB</td> <td>Earth View 250M Aggregated 500M Reflective Solar Bands Scaled Integers</td> </tr> <tr> <td>EV_250_Aggr500_RefSB_Samples_Used</td> <td>Earth View 250M Aggregated 500M Reflective Solar Bands Number of Samples Used in Aggregation</td> </tr> <tr> <td>EV_250_Aggr500_RefSB_Uncert_Indexes</td> <td>Earth View 250M Aggregated 500M Reflective Solar Bands Uncertainty Indexes</td> </tr> <tr> <td>EV_500_RefSB</td> <td>Earth View 500M Reflective Solar Bands Scaled Integers</td> </tr> <tr> <td>EV_500_RefSB_Uncert_Indexes</td> <td>Earth View 500M Reflective Solar Bands Uncertainty Indexes</td> </tr> </table> </body> </html> <br> As evident from the above table, the 250-m (red and near-infrared) bands are also aggregated to 500 m through simple weighting functions that are applied to the data at their native resolution. The v7.0 Terra MODIS MOD02HKM in netCDF4 format represents the most current version of this product that has undergone around half-a-dozen reprocessing cycles in the last 2.5 decades. Each 500-m swath granule or data-file temporally spans 5 minutes and its image dimensions measure 4,060 lines (along-track direction) by 2,708 samples (cross-track direction). The v7.0 collection’s data record starts from February 24, 2000 (2000–055). Consult the MODIS L1B User Guide to understand how to convert the per-pixel scaled integers to radiance or reflectance.

Get the data

mod02hkm_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="MOD02HKM",
    version="7",
    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 LAADS
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.