Where land is flooded, near real-time (VIIRS, 250 m)
What it measures. Daily maps showing where land is flooded around the world, at about 250-meter detail.
How it's made. Generated quickly (near real-time) from VIIRS surface-reflectance data on the NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 satellites, combined into a daily global flood composite.
How & where you'd use it. Supports disaster response and flood monitoring, letting agencies and the public see where flooding is happening soon after it occurs.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span2025-04-15 → ongoing
- Measured byNOAA-20 (VIIRS) · NOAA-21 (VIIRS) · Suomi-NPP (VIIRS)
- Processing levelLevel 3
- Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
- FormatsHDF5
- StatusACTIVE
What you can do with it
- Follow rainfall, floods and surface-water extent
- Track soil moisture and the onset of drought
- Monitor lakes, rivers and groundwater storage
Official description
The VIIRS/JPSS1+JPSS2 Daily L3 Global Flood Composite 250m Linear Lat Lon Grid Near Real Time (NRT) Product, short-name VCDWD_L3_NRT provides daily maps of flooding globally. The VCDWD_L3_NRT product is generated using VIIRS Surface Reflectance (VJ109/VJ209) products as inputs from NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 satellites. The product files are in EOS-HDF5 file format. The VIIRS Near Real-Time Global Flood Product (Collection 2) is processed by NASA's Land, Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for Earth observation (LANCE). For more information, visit [NRT Global Flood Products](https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/global-flood-product) page.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="VCDWD_L3_NRT",
version="2",
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.