MODIS to be decommissioned; is there an alternative?

[vincentschut]

Hi,

Both Terra and Aqua have left their consellation orbits, and I expect them to be decommissioned in the near future (somewhere next year?), leaving FORCE without a source of atmospheric parameter data for landsat atmospheric correction. Are there any plans to find and implement an alternative? Perhaps Sentinel3?

[davidfrantz]

Hi @vincentschut,

I was dissatisfied with the MODIS-based download for quite some time now because the downloading of products is often fairly unstable.

The good thing is that the newer OLI sensors are much less affected by water vapor than the previous ones. As such, using the long-term climatology is actually quite robust for new data. Please see this paper where we evaluated this: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/11/3/257
Only the 2nd SWIR is still a bit influenced, and not every climate zone and season is affected in the same way.

But nevertheless, yes, a substitute would be in order. I was thinking about the CAMS forecast data. But unfortunately, I never had the time to really look into this.

I am gonna label this issue as help wanted in case anybody wants to chip in.

Cheers,
David

[Florian-Katerndahl]

Dear all,
a while back I talked with @davidfrantz and at least the download side of things is done (and should work without bugs) and can be currently be found here: https://github.com/Florian-Katerndahl/shop4AtmosData. As I now want/have to focus on my bachelor thesis and other work, David took over the implementation of actually using the data (if I understood you correct).

Cheers,
Florian

[jakimowb]

Our force-lut-modis logs show that there is now data to download since 2025-03-11:

2025/03/09. LUT exists.
2025 03 10
2025/03/10. LUT exists.
2025 03 11
2025/03/11. do. Download TERRA geometa. Try #    1; curl: 22. fail.  2; curl: 22. fail. ...
2025 03 12
2025/03/12. do. Download TERRA geometa. Try #   1; curl: 22. fail. 2; curl: 22. fail. ...
...
2025 12 15
2025/12/15. do. Download TERRA geometa. Try #   1; curl: 22. fail. 2; curl: 22. fail. ...