True surface color, near real-time (Terra, daily, 500 m–1 km)
What it measures. The true surface color of land and water in seven color bands at 500-meter detail, adjusted to show colors as they'd appear at ground level without the blurring and dimming caused by the atmosphere. It also carries quality ratings and viewing-angle details.
How it's made. Produced in near-real-time from the MODIS instrument aboard Terra, with the raw signal corrected for atmospheric haze and gases and placed on a daily map grid.
How & where you'd use it. Its quick turnaround makes it useful for watching fast-moving events like fires, floods, and dust, and it acts as a foundation layer for many higher-level MODIS land products.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2021-02-07 → ongoing
- Measured byTerra (MODIS)
- Processing levelLevel 2G
- 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/Terra Surface Reflectance Daily L2G Global 1km and 500m SIN Grid Near Real Time (NRT) product is an estimate of the surface spectral reflectance as it would be measured at ground level in the absence of atmospheric scattering or absorption. Low-level data are corrected for atmospheric gases and aerosols, yielding a level-2 basis for several higher-order gridded level-2 (L2G) and level-3 products. This product, with short name MOD09GA provides Bands 1-7 in a daily gridded L2G product in the Sinusoidal projection, which includes 500-meter reflectance values and 1-kilometer observation and geolocation statistics. 500-meter Science Data Sets provided by this product include reflectance for Bands 1-7, a quality rating, observation coverage, observation number, and 250-meter scan information. 1-kilometer Science Data Sets provided include number of observations, quality state, sensor angles, solar angles, geolocation flags, and orbit pointers.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="MOD09GA",
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.