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Full catalog/MYD10_L2
MYD10_L2·v61·dataset

Where there's snow (Aqua, 500 m)

MODIS/Aqua Snow Cover 5-Min L2 Swath 500m V061
cryosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 2 active HDF-EOS2
In plain English

What it measures. Maps where snow was on the ground worldwide each day, at about 500-meter detail, including flags marking spots where the snow call is uncertain.

How it's made. Produced from light measurements by the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite, which spots snow using an index that compares how bright a surface looks in different wavelengths.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for tracking seasonal snow cover, feeding water-supply and flood forecasts, and studying how snow extent shifts over time.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › SNOW COVER

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2002-07-04 → ongoing
  • Measured byAqua (MODIS)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsHDF-EOS2
  • StatusACTIVE

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

This global Level-2 (L2) data set provides daily snow cover detected using Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI) and a series of screens designed to alleviate errors and flag uncertain snow cover detections. The NDSI is derived from radiance data acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board the Aqua satellite: DOI:10.5067/MODIS/MYD02HKM.061 and DOI:10.5067/MODIS/MYD021KM.061. Each data granule contains 5 minutes of swath data observed at a resolution of 500 m. The terms "Version 61" and "Collection 6.1" are used interchangeably in reference to this release of MODIS data.

Get the data

myd10_l2_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="MYD10_L2",
    version="61",
    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 NSIDC_CPRD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.