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Full catalog/MYD10A2
MYD10A2·v61·dataset

Where there's snow on the ground (Aqua, 8-day, 500 m)

MODIS/Aqua Snow Cover 8-Day L3 Global 500m SIN Grid V061
cryosphere NASA NSIDC_CPRD Level 3 active HDF-EOS2
In plain English

What it measures. Shows where snow was on the ground, summarized over each eight-day stretch. For every small patch of land it records the most snow seen during that window, plus a day-by-day snow/no-snow history.

How it's made. Built by combining daily snow maps from the MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite into eight-day composites at about 500-meter detail.

How & where you'd use it. Helps track seasonal snow cover, water supply from melting snow, and changes in snowy regions over time, with the eight-day grouping cutting through cloudy days that hide the ground.

What's measured

CRYOSPHERE › SNOW/ICE › SNOW COVER

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2002-07-04 → ongoing
  • Measured byAqua (MODIS)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • 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-3 (L3) data set provides the maximum snow cover extent (SNE) observed over an eight-day period within 10° x 10° MODIS sinusoidal grid tiles. Tiles are generated by compositing 500 m observations from the 'MODIS/Aqua Snow Cover Daily L3 Global 500m Grid' data set (DOI:10.5067/MODIS/MYD10A1.061). A bit flag index is used to track the eight-day snow/no-snow chronology for each 500 m cell. The terms "Version 61" and "Collection 6.1" are used interchangeably in reference to this release of MODIS data.

Get the data

myd10a2_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="MYD10A2",
    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.