Sunlight reflected at the top of the air (NOAA-7, daily)
What it measures. Daily maps of how much sunlight is reflected at the top of the atmosphere, on a fine global grid.
How it's made. Generated from the AVHRR instrument on the NOAA-7 satellite as part of a long-term climate data record, built from a brightness-corrected surface reflectance product.
How & where you'd use it. Part of a decades-long bridge of consistent satellite records used to study long-term changes in vegetation and land surfaces for climate research.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span1981-06-24 → 1985-02-02
- Measured byNOAA-7 (AVHRR)
- Processing levelLevel 3
- 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 Long-Term Data Record (LTDR) produces, validates, and distributes a global land surface climate data record (CDR) that uses both mature and well-tested algorithms in concert with the best-available polar-orbiting satellite data from past to the present. The CDR is critically important to studying global climate change. The LTDR project is unique in that it serves as a bridge that connects data derived from the NOAA Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), the EOS Moderate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), and Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) VIIRS missions. The LTDR draws from the following eight AVHRR missions: NOAA-7, NOAA-9, NOAA-11, NOAA-14, NOAA-16, NOAA-18, NOAA-19, and MetOp-B. Currently, the project generates a daily surface reflectance product as the fundamental climate data record (FCDR) and derives daily Normalized Differential Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Leaf-Area Index/fraction of absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (LAI/fPAR) as two thematic CDRs (TCDR). LAI/fPAR was developed as an experimental product. The NOAA-07 AVHRR Top-of-Atmosphere Reflectance Daily L3 Global 0.05 Deg. CMG, short-name N07_AVH02C1 is generated from GIMMS Advanced Processing System (GAPS) BRDF-corrected Surface Reflectance product (AVH01C1). The N07_AVH02C1 consist of Top-of-atmosphere reflectance for bands 1 and 2, data Quality flags, angles (solar zenith, view zenith, and relative azimuth), thermal data (thermal bands 3, 4 and 5), and additional data (scan time).
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="N07_AVH02C1",
version="6",
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 LAADS Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package. Official links
- Overview of LTDR Products documents VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- Search and order products from LAADS website. GET DATA
- Direct access to C6 M1_AVH02C1 data set. GET DATA
- A combined User's Guides for all L3 LTDR products VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- Earthdata Search allows users to search, discover, visualize, refine, and access NASA Earth Observation data. GET DATA