Dear User, This site features a series of consistently processed datasets (land, sea ice and clouds) from TERRA MODIS and related datasets (topography, land cover, city lights), all at the 1km resolution. They all originate from processing of this sensor's data through the years 2000-2001 and originate in the final version from January 2002. You can find the blue marble and related files at this site for public download: ftp://veftp.gsfc.nasa.gov/outgoing/bluemarble/ Please also see: http://bluemarble.nasa.gov http://www.iac.ethz.ch/staff/stockli/bmng/ It follows a short description of the datasets ---------------------------------------------- All datasets are in the regular lat-lon grid with a grid spacing of 0.008333 degrees per pixel. This projection results in heavy distortion over the poles, but is suitable for most imaging purposes and needs least explication to the user. Once mapped onto a globe or reprojected to a more suitable global map the distortions are no longer visible. The files are all split into the western and eastern hemisphere with a pixel dimension 21600x21600 each. This way people using Photoshop can read and look at the files. Most are in the byte grayscale other in the interleaved RGB 24bit space, but also some in the unsigned 16bit integer data format. A lot more re-touching could be applied to the blue marble land+ocean dataset, but considering the time constraints we have for the Olympics display, I think that this is the best we can provide and I look forward to hear your comments on the images and on the visualizations that are going to be made with it. I will render some hi-res globes myself with the new datasets when I find some time. Blue Marble terrestrial data ---------------------------- Dataset: MOD09A1, MOD12Q1 Format: PNG 8bit-per-channel RGB interleaved, 21600x21600 Compositing period: Day 145-241/2001 with 2-3 weeks gaps flat unshaded: MOD09A1.E.interpol.cyl.retouched.3x21600x21600.gz MOD09A1.W.interpol.cyl.retouched.3x21600x21600.gz topography hill-shaded (3x scaled) - light from 45degNW MOD09A1.E.interpol.cyl.retouched.topo.3x21600x21600.gz MOD09A1.W.interpol.cyl.retouched.topo.3x21600x21600.gz topography + bathymetry hill-shaded (3x on land and 6x seafloor) MOD09A1.E.interpol.cyl.retouched.topo.bathymetry.3x21600x21600.gz MOD09A1.W.interpol.cyl.retouched.topo.bathymetry.3x21600x21600.gz The Blue Marble Antarctica data origins from the NOAA AVHRR sensor and was compiled at 1km by: Jane G. Ferrigno and Pat S. Chavez Jr., USGS http://TerraWeb.wr.usgs.gov/TRS/projects/Antarctica/AVHRR.html Problem areas: west Africa, central China, Indonesia, West coast of Ecuador Blue Marble Sea Ice data ------------------------ Dataset: Dataset: MOD29P1D Format: PNG, sea ice mask, 21600x21600 Compositing Period: Spring 100-108/2001 Autumn 240-248/2001 MOD29P1D.E.autumn.21600x21600.gz MOD29P1D.W.autumn.21600x21600.gz MOD29P1D.E.spring.21600x21600.gz MOD29P1D.W.spring.21600x21600.gz Problem areas: Some cloud mask artifacts. At all, polar sea ice is not really looking nice on a rectangular cylindrical projection! Blue Marble Cloud layer ----------------------- Dataset: MOD021KM, MOD03, MOD35_L2, MOD06_L2 Format: PNG, cloud reflectance, 21600x21600 Compositing period: Day 210/2001 (day 320/2001 stitched at the south) cloud.E.2001210.21600x21600.06.zip cloud.W.2001210.21600x21600.06.zip Problem areas: No data over the poles. World City Lights ----------------- Format: PNG, light reflectance mask (intensity scaled exponentially) world_lights_cities.E.21600x21600.gz world_lights_cities.W.21600x21600.gz Attention: The world lights dataset should be directly downloaded at the source: http://dmsp.ngdc.noaa.gov/html/projects/lights.html Land Cover map (also land/ocean mask) ------------------------------------- Format PNG, land cover map (values 0-13, 0 is water >0 is land) Classification see DeFries. et al. (1998) and Hansen et al. (2001) landcover.E.21600x21600.gz landcover.W.21600x21600.gz Attention: The land cover dataset should be directly downloaded at the source: http://www.geog.umd.edu/landcover/1km-map.html Topography maps --------------- Format: PNG, 16bit unsigned integer. Topgraphy has been shifted by 32768 so that all values remain positive. Dimensions: 21600x21600 Units: meters Land and Ocean: topo.bathymetry.E.21600x21600.gz topo.bathymetry.W.21600x21600.gz Land only: topo.E.21600x21600.gz topo.W.21600x21600.gz Ocean only: bathymetry.E.21600x21600.gz bathymetry.W.21600x21600.gz Attention: The topography dataset should be directly downloaded at the source: http://edcdaac.usgs.gov/gtopo30/gtopo30.html When using these datasets please give credits to: ------------------------------------------------- Author: Reto Stockli, NASA Earth Observatory, rstockli@climate.gsfc.nasa.gov Address of correspondance: Reto Stockli Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science ETH Zurich 8092 Zurich Switzerland Phone: +41 (0)44 632 3495 Email: rstockli@climate.gsfc.nasa.gov http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/stockli Supervisors: Fritz Hasler and David Herring, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Funding: This project was realized under the SSAI subcontract 2101-01-027 (NAS5-01070) Original data sources --------------------- 1. Land,ocean,sea ice and clouds: MODIS Atmosphere, Land and Ocean Discipline Groups http://modarch.gsfc.nasa.gov/ 2. Antarctica: Pat S. Chavez, Jr., USGS, 2255 N. Gemini Dr., Flagstaff, AZ 86001 http://TerraWeb.wr.usgs.gov/TRS/projects/Antarctica/AVHRR.html 3. Topography (Land and ocean): USGS EROS data center http://edcdaac.usgs.gov/gtopo30/gtopo30.html 4. Land Cover: UMD 1km Land Cover, Hansen et al. (2000) http://www.geog.umd.edu/landcover/1km-map.html 5. City lights: World Stable Lights Images - October 1994 to March 1995 Derived from DMSP OLS Nighttime Imagery, produced at NOAA/NGDC. http://dmsp.ngdc.noaa.gov/html/projects/lights.html