Search

The search pages allow users to search for MODIS products either by specifying criteria that applies to the products or by specifying the products file names.

Search for Products

The following criteria may be specified when searching for products:

Product Selection

The product selection section allows users to select one or more MODIS products. Products are listed in a scrolling box and labeled with the product's Earth Science Data Type (ESDT) and a brief description. You may select products by clicking on the product in the scrolling box. This will highlight the product's ESDT and description. You may select as many products as you wish. However, some browsers require you to hold down the CTRL key while clicking on the product to select more than one.

The products are organized by satellite/instrument and group. Whenever a new satellite/instrument or group is selected, the products listed in the scrolling box change to match the new satellite/instrument and group. Any highlighted products are carried over from the previous group. If you do not have javascript enabled in your browser, you will need to click the "Update" button next to the satellite/instruments and groups to force the products listed in the scrolling box to change.

Temporal Selection

The temporal selection section allows users to input a date and time range. The date and time must be in one of the following formats:

MM/DD/YYYY [HH:MM:SS AM|PM] or YYYY-DDD [HH:MM:SS AM|PM]

where MM is the month, DD is the day of month, YYYY is the year, DDD is the day of year, HH is the hour, MM is the minute. and SS in the second. The hour, minute, and second are optional. If not specified, they will default to 12:00AM.

By default, the start date and time is set to the launch date of Terra and the end date and time is set to the current date.

Collection Selection

The collection selection section allows users to select a collection. In the pull down menu, the collection is specified first followed by a description of the collection.

Spatial Selection

The spatial selection section allows users to specify their area of interest using latitude/longitude coordinates. The area of interest may be entered either by typing the coordinates into the text boxes, dragging your mouse on the map to draw a rubber band box around the area of interest, or selecting one of the predefined regions. The last two options are only available to Javascript enabled browsers.

There are six different ways to specify coordinates in the text boxes. They are:

  1. North, West, East, South
  2. Center Lat/Lon, delta Lat/Lon
  3. Upper Left Corner, delta Lat/Lon
  4. Upper Right Corner, delta Lat/Lon
  5. Lower Left Corner, delta Lat/Lon
  6. Lower Right Corner, delta Lat/Lon
A pull down menu located above the text boxes is used to select the way to specify the coordinates. If Javascript is enabled, the labels on the text boxes will change to match the way the coordinates are specified. If Javascript isn't enabled, you will need to click on the "Update" button to update the text box labels.

Coverage Selection

The coverage selection section allows users to select coverage options. The coverage options are as follows:

For example, if you were to select the Day and Night coverage options, the granules returned would contain either day data only or night data only. None of the granules would contain both day and night data.

Coverage options are not defined for all products. Therefore, the coverage options checkboxes are disabled unless you have selected products for which the coverage options are defined.

Quality Assurance Selection

The quality assurance selection section allows users to select a start and end range for the percentage of missing data.

Saved Parameters Selection

You may save your search parameters to a file on your computer for later use. Simply enter the desired search parameters, input a file name in the saved parameters selection section, and click "Save". The parameters are saved as name=value pairs in a file with the file name you specified on your computer.

To load parameters previously saved to a file, simply enter the file name in the saved parameters selection section and click "Load". You may also click on "Browse" to find the file.

Search for File Names

File names may also be specified when searching for products. File names usually have a format like one of the following:

ESDT.AYYYYDDD.HHMM.CCC.YYYYDDDHHMMSS.hdf
ESDT.AYYYYDDD.hNNvNN.CCC.YYYYDDDHHMMSS.hdf

where ESDT is the product name, YYYYDDD is the product's data year and day of year, HHMM is the product's hour and minute for granule data, hNNvNN is the product's horizontal and vertical tiles for tiled data, CCC is the product's collection number, and YYYYDDDHHMMSS is the product's production year, day of year, hour, minute, and second.

If you are unsure of the production time or would simply like to specify all granules for data day 2005-001, you may specify partial file names. For example: MOD03.A2005001