Naming Convention

Planetary Variables data products follow a simple three-part naming convention: {product-name}_{version-string}_{pixel-size}.

product-name:

The name of the product. This name itself usually consists of several parts separated by hyphens (-). The first part is the actual product (eg.e SM, TEFF etc), the other (usually three) parts give the product attributes, e.g.: SM-{SAT}-{BAND}-{TIME}. Here {SAT} will be replaced by the satellite/instrument {BAND} will be replaced by the frequency band the product has been derived from, {TIME} will be replaced by the part of the orbit (ASC or DESC). For example SM-SMAP-LN-DESC specifies soil moisture for the SMAP satellite using L band derived from the descending orbit and QF-AMSR2-SM-C1V-DESC specifies the quality flags for soil moisture derived from the AMSR2 instrument descending C band with vegetation correction.

version-string:

The version string is made up of 4 positions. It always starts with a V and the remaining three positions denote a integer number padded with zeros (e.g. V001 or V034 are describing version 1 and version 34, respectively). Minor version information can be found in the meta data of the actual data products.

pixel-size:

Pixel size is given as a number in meters. This is an approximate size as the data itself is stored in decimal degrees (WGS84). The actual size in decimal degrees is given in the description of each data product.