Water vapor in the whole air column (Terra, near real-time)
What it measures. The total water vapor in the full column of air, over clear land, sunlit ocean, and above clouds. This is an improved-processing version delivered in near real time.
How it's made. Comes from the MODIS instrument on Terra, reprocessed through NASA's updated Collection 6.1 pipeline that fixes earlier calibration issues, using how near-infrared sunlight is dimmed by water vapor.
How & where you'd use it. Supports fast-turnaround weather monitoring and atmospheric moisture tracking where timeliness is the priority.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2017-10-11 → ongoing
- Measured byTERRA (MODIS)
- Processing levelLevel 2
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
- FormatsHDF-EOS
- 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 MODIS Adaptive Processing System (MODAPS) is currently generating an improved Collection 6.1 (061) for all MODIS Level-1 (L1) and higher-level Level-2 (L2) & Level-3 (L3) Atmosphere Team products. This decision to create a new improved Collection 6.1 (061) was driven by the need to address a number of issues in the current Collection 6 (006) Level-1B (L1B) data. These L1B issues had a negative impact in varying degrees in downstream products, The MODIS level-2 atmospheric precipitable water product consists of total atmospheric column water vapor amounts (and ancillary parameters) over clear land areas of the globe, over extended clear oceanic areas with the Sun glint, and above clouds over both land and ocean. The shortname for this level-2 MODIS total precipitable water vapor product is MOD05_L2. In Collection 6, MODIS column water vapor (MOD05) datasets continue to be separately available from infrared and near-infrared methods. The estimates based on a near-infrared algorithm uses only daytime measurements with solar zenith angle less than 72 degrees. The retrieval algorithm relies on observations of water vapor attenuation of near-infrared solar radiation reflected by surfaces and clouds. The product is produced only over areas that have reflective surfaces in the near-infrared. The near-infrared algorithm refinement for this product is no longer being supported by NASA and as such there has been no update to this algorithm for C6.1
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="MOD05_L2",
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.