Daily global snow cover and brightness at 500m (Copernicus)
What it measures. Shows where snow is lying on the ground each day and how reflective (bright) that snow is, at 500-metre detail across the globe.
How it's made. Derived from daily MODIS observations on NASA's Aqua satellite, assembled into global daily tiles on a 500-metre grid.
How & where you'd use it. Helps track snow extent for water-supply forecasting, flood and avalanche awareness, and climate and mountain-region studies.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2002-07-08 → ongoing
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
What you can do with it
- Measure sea ice, snow cover and glaciers
- Watch ice-sheet elevation change
- Track freeze/thaw and permafrost
Official description
The MODIS Aqua MYD10A1 Version 6.1 product provides a global Level-3 daily composite of snow cover and albedo derived from the MODIS/Aqua Snow Cover 5-Min L2 Swath 500 m dataset. The data are generated as daily composites and distributed in 10° × 10° tiles projected to a 500 m sinusoidal grid. Each tile contains information on snow cover extent and surface albedo derived from MODIS Aqua observations, enabling consistent global monitoring of snow conditions. The terms Version 61 and Collection 6.1 are used interchangeably to refer to this release of MODIS data.
Get the data
# ESA Copernicus Data Space — open STAC API (free account)
from pystac_client import Client
cat = Client.open("https://stac.dataspace.copernicus.eu/v1")
search = cat.search(
collections=["modis-aqua-myd10a1"], # add _cog or _nc for a format variant
bbox=(-10, 35, 30, 60), # your area (W,S,E,N)
datetime="2024-01-01/2024-12-31",
)
items = list(search.items()) # then read assets with rioxarray / xarrayBrowsing the Copernicus STAC is open; downloading bytes needs a free Copernicus Data Space account.
Official links
- Open data source Copernicus STAC