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The Earth Observer July - August 2012 Volume 24, Issue 4 23
MODIS Science Team Meeting
Tassia Owen, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Sigma Space, tassia.owen@nasa.gov
Introduction
Members of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS) Science Team gathered at the Silver
Spring Civic Building in Silver Spring, MD from May
7-9, 2012. The meeting included a two-and-a-half day plenary
meeting, discipline breakout sessions, and a final halfday-long
calibration workshop. The meeting presentations
are available at modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/sci_team/meetings.
Plenary Meetings
Michael King [University of Colorado—MODIS Science
Team Leader] opened the meeting by welcoming
the participants to the new meeting location. He noted
that the tenth anniversary of the launch of Aqua—
which hosts a MODIS instrument—was May 4, 2012.
Michael Freilich [NASA Headquarters (HQ)—Earth
Science Division Director] followed with a broad discussion
of current and future Earth science activities at
NASA. He gave a brief overview of the NASA organizational
chart, making particular note of recent changes
and vacancies. Currently, there are 16 Earth science research
missions; most are already past their design lifetime.
This aging notwithstanding, capabilities are still
largely intact, and recommendations are that all 16 missions
continue. Last year, two Earth-observing satellites
were launched: the Suomi National Polar-orbiting
Partnership (Suomi NPP), in October, and Aquarius, in
June. NASA has responded favorably and aggressively to
the National Research Council’s 2007 Decadal Survey,
embracing its overall recommendations and its findings.
Future satellite missions include the Landsat Data Continuity
Mission (LDCM) and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2
(OCO-2). Venture-class missions will play
an important role in future research, including all three
“strands” of this approach—suborbital and airborne investigations;
small, complete missions; and spaceborne
instruments on missions of opportunity.
Paula Bontempi [HQ—MODIS Program Scientist] addressed
the use of data and derived products from two
of the Earth Observing System (EOS) satellites—Terra
and Aqua—and their sensors. She noted that the 2009
Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science
(ROSES) will be used to guide ROSES 2013. As Terra
and Aqua continue to mature, less emphasis will be
placed upon algorithm refinement and more on multisensor
product development, accompanied by active
use of data and derived products in scientific research,
modeling, synthesis, and diagnostic analysis to answer
Earth science questions.
Jack Xiong [NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
(GSFC)—MODIS Project Scientist] summarized the
MODIS publication metrics, showing that MODIS
data have to-date contributed to 5119 scientific publications
since Terra launch in 1999, with over 43,000 citations.
He then provided an update on instrument status
for MODIS on both Terra and Aqua. Over the lifetime
of the instruments, the short wavelength visible imaging
system bands have shown increasing degradation,
and a few near-infrared bands have shown gain increases.
Changes in shortwave infrared responses have been very
small, while medium-wavelength and long-wavelength
infrared performance has been stable, with less than a 2%
change over the duration of the missions. Overall, the
signal-to-noise ratio performance remains satisfactory.
Edward Masouka [GSFC] spoke about reprocessing
and product distribution, Collection 6 1 , and future initiatives,
noting that over 250 million product files will likely
be distributed in 2012. Currently, there is no way to
track individual users; to enable such tracking in the future,
users may be asked to register. Masouka discussed
different test systems and lessons learned from Collection
6 processing, including creating separate strings for
each discipline to avoid delays in testing. The future,
Collection 7 will be defined with input from the science
team, and documentation for long-term archives will be
improved, using common Web-based services.
Jim Gleason [GSFC—Suomi NPP Project Scientist] presented
an overview of the Suomi NPP instruments and science.
Currently, data are flowing to the National Environmental
Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) and Air
Force Weather Agency (AFWA) centrals, and the Comprehensive
Large Array-data Stewardship System (CLASS) archive.
He discussed the five instruments onboard the Suomi
NPP spacecraft: the Advanced Technology Microwave
Sounder (ATMS), the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS),
the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CE-
RES), Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS), and the
Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). The CE-
RES, an EOS-era instrument, is working well.
Gleason also discussed an anomaly caused by a deposit of
tungsten oxide on the mirrors of the VIIRS instrument,
which occurred during the manufacturing process—and
has the largest impact on the near-infrared channels. The
deposit essentially makes one day of actual ultraviolet exposure
equivalent to an expected six-and-a-half-day exposure,
causing rapidly increasing degradation; the science team is
working to compensate for the anomaly. Overall, however,
the spacecraft and instruments are operating well.
1
As of this writing, Collection 6 is the most recent round of
reprocessed MODIS data.
meeting/workshop summaries