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Standard data products consist of geophysical measurements from various types of instruments. The products often depict geophysical measurements in various geographic projections, grid resolutions, parameter and time aggregates, and algorithm versions. As such, they may be represented by multiple product dataset collections. Information about the product collections archived at NASA DAACs are recorded in NASA's Common Metadata Repository (CMR).

Standard data products meet the following criteria:

  1. They are internally consistent, well-calibrated records of observations of Earth's geophysical properties.
  2. They contain geophysical parameters and can be used for science research and application.
  3. A standard data product file may require companion/support files to make data usable or to satisfy policy requirements. Examples include geolocation data files, browse image data, calibration and validation, higher-resolution data undergoing validation, and data quality metrics.
  4. Standard data products are validated, quality assured, and fully documented. For more information, see Data Maturity Levels.

Summaries of Available Standard Data Products

Lists of these collections have been extracted from the CMR to summarize the standard products that are currently available. Three lists, current as of August 5, 2020, are available:

Two lists also are available for near real-time products. Note that near real-time data are not standard products, but they are related. For more information on the differences between standard data products and near real-time data, see the Data Latency page:

Below are descriptions of the spreadsheet column metadata and how to use these lists.

Data Provider

This metadata field describes DAACs and their personnel or internal groups responsible for originating, processing, archiving, and/or distributing the data and metadata. The name maps to one of the DAACs.

Short Name and Version

The collection short name and version are defined by the PI, Science Team, and Science Investigator-led Processing System (SIPS) in coordination with the DAAC. The short name and version ID combination are unique.

Product Name

This is the free-form title of the collection as defined by the PI, Science Teams, and SIPS in coordination with the DAAC. It often includes the processing level, the geophysical parameter, the geographic or vertical map resolution, and the collection version. In some cases multiple collection names will be associated with a single standard product. The names may be used to indicate or suggest how their contents relate. For example, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) geolocation data files should be associated with the MODIS files having geophysical parameter names. Various reprojections, grid resolutions, or time aggregations may be stored in separate product collections.

Processing Level

The below definition of data processing levels are sourced from EOSDIS Terminology Specification 423-SPEC-002 (PDF, 333 KB):

  • Level 0 (L0): Reconstructed, unprocessed instrument or platform data at full resolution
  • Level 1A (L1A): Reconstructed, unprocessed instrument data at full resolution, time-referenced, and annotated with ancillary information, including radiometric and geometric calibration coefficients and georeferencing parameters, e.g., platform ephemeris, computed and appended but not applied to the Level 0 data
  • Level 1B (L1B): Level 1A data that have been processed to instrument units
  • Level 2 (L2): Derived geophysical variables at the same resolution and location as the Level 1 source data
  • Level 3 (L3): Level 3 data products are variables mapped on uniform space-time grid scales
  • Level 4 (L4): Level 4 data products are model output or results from analyses of lower level data, e.g., variables derived from multiple measurements

Spacecraft (Platform)

This metadata field describes the relevant on-orbit platform used to acquire the data. For products that incorporate data from multiple missions, we assign the platform name to the EOS or partner platform (e.g., Suomi NPP, NOAA-20, GCOM-W).

Start Time

The start time describes the time in which the dataset was acquired or when the measurements occurred for a specific collection. The start time can represent the beginning data time, a single data time, or the data time for the period covered by the collection.

Reference

The definition of standard data products was derived from the Earth Science Reference Handbook (edited by Parkinson, Ward, and King), 2006.