Dataset

NASA Earth-observation imagery & products

Free & Open Data API GeoTIFF NetCDF 1 source

NASA's earth-observation archives spanning several decades, MODIS and VIIRS land products, GPM precipitation, GRACE water storage, SRTM elevation and more than a dozen mission archives, all searchable through the Earthdata Search CMR API.

Dataset card

NASA Earthdata distributes Earth-observation imagery and derived products covering land cover, precipitation, and climate variables under an open-access license. The collection aggregates satellite and ancillary geospatial datasets published by NASA Earthdata.

What this dataset contains

The collection comprises Earth-observation imagery and processed products generated from NASA satellite missions and related sources. Tags indicate coverage of satellite imagery, land-cover classifications, precipitation measurements, and broader climate variables. The provider does not disclose a total size or download count for the aggregate offering.

Structure and fields

No explicit column schema, sample rows, or split definitions are provided in the source description, and masked sample rows are listed as none. Because individual NASA Earthdata products vary widely in spatial resolution, projection, and band configuration, field names are product-dependent rather than standardized across the collection. Analysts typically retrieve per-product metadata such as acquisition date, tile identifier, and science variables from the Earthdata portal.

How analysts use it

Investment teams with thematic mandates in commodities, agriculture, or climate risk can query precipitation and land-cover layers to support regional yield or drought exposure assessments. Imagery and derived climate products also feed proprietary models of physical climate risk applied to real-asset and utility holdings. Use cases depend on the analyst's ability to ingest geospatial rasters and reconcile them with company-level exposure data.

Documentation & references 2
  1. NASA Earthdata/NASA Earth-observation imagery & products: listing on the provider website
  2. NASA Earthdata: official website

Further reading

All guides
  • How funds evaluate alternative data vendorsEvaluating alternative-data providers: research fit, provenance, historical timing, permitted use and the evidence needed for an informed purchasing decision.
  • Open vs commercial alternative dataWhat free and open datasets can and cannot do: where public data rivals paid panels, where it cannot compete, and how open sources fit a professional research workflow.
  • Alternative data for hedge fundsA practical guide to alternative data for hedge funds: team design, budget sequencing, infrastructure, vendor portfolio construction and the metrics that show whether the program creates investment value.
  • Free alternative data sourcesThe practical list of free alternative-data sources for investors: public filings, official statistics, satellite and earth observation, on-chain data, web archives and open registries, what each covers, what it costs in engineering effort, and where free data falls short.

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