Summary

Description

The OMI/Aura and MODIS/Aqua Merged Cloud Product 1-Orbit L2 Swath 13x24 km (OMMYDCLD) is a Level-2 orbital product that combines cloud parameters retrieved by the Ozone Mapping Instrument (OMI) on the Aura satellite with collocated statistical information for cloud parameters retrieved by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) on the Aqua spacecraft. This product is designed to take advantage of the synergy between OMI and MODIS, which both fly on satellites in the NASA A-Train constellation of Earth-observing satellites that follow similar orbital tracks and collect near-simultaneous observations. This product can be used for cloud-clearing, detection of multi-layered clouds, and other applications that may exploit these multi-spectral measurements. The algorithm for the OMMYDCLD product co-locates daytime cloud parameters from MODIS onto the OMI visible (VIS) pixel for a given OMI orbit and generates statistical information from the collocated MODIS pixels. For each OMI granule, the orbit start and end times are used to select the corresponding 5-minute MODIS granules for processing. A contiguous list of MODIS granules spanning the full duration of the OMI orbit are selected based on the relative time lag between Aqua and Aura. The algorithm lead for this product is NASA OMI scientist Dr. Joanna Joiner. OMMYDCLD data files are stored in the EOS Hierarchical Data Format (HDF-EOS5) using the swath model, and follows the same conventions used by the other OMI Level-2 data products. Each file contains data from the day lit portion of an orbit (about 53 minutes). There are approximately 14 orbits per day. The file size for the OMMYDCLD data product is about 8 Mbytes. Data Category Parameters: The OMMYDCLD data file contains one swath which consists of two groups: Data fields: Effective Cloud Fraction and Cloud Top Pressures and MODIS histogram statistics and many Auxiliary Algorithm Parameter and Quality Flags. Geolocation Fields: Latitude, Longitude, Time, Solar Zenith Angle, Viewing Zenith Angle, Relative Azimuth Angle, Terrain Height, and Ground Pixel Quality Flags.