The Terra Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Surface Reflectance VNIR and SWIR (AST_07) data product contains measures of the fraction of incoming solar radiation reflected from the Earth’s surface to the ASTER instrument corrected for atmospheric effects and viewing geometry for both the Visible and Near Infrared (VNIR) and Shortwave Infrared (SWIR) sensors. The AST_07 product has a spatial resolution of 15 meters (m) for the VNIR bands and 30 m for the SWIR bands.

Known Issues

• Level 2 products that are on the international date line/anti-meridian have incorrect bounding coordinates for the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) zone defined in the file metadata.
• SWIR data acquired after April 2008 may exhibit anomalous saturation and striping. Users should consult the ASTER SWIR User Advisory for additional details.

Improvements/Changes from Previous Versions

• Enhanced Atmospheric Correction: Version 4 uses Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications Version 2 (MERRA-2) data as the primary source for atmospheric parameters (ozone, water vapor, pressure, and temperature), improving the precision of emissivity calculations. Fallback Mechanisms: When MERRA-2 data are unavailable, the product employs Global Data Assimilation System (GDAS) data as a backup, with climatology data serving as a final fallback to ensure continuous processing. Radiometric Calibration Update: Version 4 applies Radiometric Calibration Coefficient Version 5 (RCC V5) to improve the radiometric accuracy of the raw DNs, based on research by Tsuchida and others (2020), published in Remote Sensing.