MODIS was launched aboard the Terra satellite on December 18, 1999 (10:30 am equator crossing time) as part of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) mission. MODIS with its 2330 km viewing swath width provides almost daily global coverage. It acquires data in 36 high spectral resolution bands between 0.415 to 14.235 micron with spatial resolutions of 250m(2 bands), 500m(5 bands),and 1000m (29 bands). MODIS sensor counts, calibrated radiances, geolocation products and all derived geophysical atmospheric and ocean products are archived at various DAACs and has been made available to public since April 2000.

The shortname for this level-3 MODIS aerosol product is MCDAODHD. The Naval Research Laboratory and the University of North Dakota developed this value-added aerosol optical depth dataset based on MODIS Level 2 aerosol products. MCDAODHD is a gridded product and is specifically designed for quantitative applications including data assimilation and model validation. It is available through LANCE-MODIS. It offers several enhancements over the MODIS Level 2 data on which it is based. These enhancements include stringent filtering to reduce outliers, eliminate cloud contamination, and exclude conditions where aerosol detection is likely to be inaccurate; reduction of systematic biases over land and ocean by empirical corrections; reduction of random variation in AOD values by spatial averaging; quantitative estimation of uncertainty for each AOD data point.

The MxDAODHD granules are produced every six hours, and time-stamped 00:00, 06:00, 12:00, and 18:00 (all times UTC). Each granule includes MODIS observations from +/-3 hours from the timestamp (e.g. 12:00 product includes MODIS data from 09:00-15:00 UTC). Production is initiated as soon as the Level 2 inputs become available in the LANCE system.