Earthdata Forum

Good day

I have been using Earthdata Search with temporal and spatial filters to download VIIRS and MODIS Level-2 Regional Ocean Color (OC) -Near Real time (NRT) Data and Level-2 Regional 11µm Daytime Sea Surface Temperature (SST) - Near Real-time (NRT) Data for some time. However, this week I have been unable to download any VIIRS and MODIS Level-2 Regional Ocean Color (OC) - NRT data and only limited SST data has been available to download.
It would be greatly appreciated if anyone could assist in how to download this data.

Many thanks.
Regards
Sharon

Hi Sharon,
I'd like to help. Do you have any screenshots, error messages, or other description of the problem so I can look around for any issues that may need to be resolved? For instance:
1) What did you experience when you determined you were 'unable to download' VIIRS and MODIS SST NRT data?
2) Was there an apparent, unavailable data date range that corresponds to the 'limited SST' you were able to download?
3) Did any operation fail/pause/or disconnect?

Dears,

I am experiencing the same issue and opened a similar post at the same time (viewtopic.php?t=7897). Apologies for the duplicate.

In my post you may find some additional details, but as a quick test (I wrote a small Python script to simplify my use of earthaccess), here are the parameters I used:
Parameters converted for NASA API = {'short_name': 'MODISA_L2_SST_NRT', 'temporal': ('2026-05-06', '2026-05-06'), 'polygon': [(-6, 30), (37, 30), (37, 37), (29, 37), (29, 41), (20, 41), (20, 43), (14, 46), (11, 46), (0, 43), (-6, 38), (-6, 30)]}

This query returns results.

However, using:
Parameters converted for NASA API = {'short_name': 'MODISA_L2_OC_NRT', 'temporal': ('2026-05-06', '2026-05-06'), 'polygon': [(-6, 30), (37, 30), (37, 37), (29, 37), (29, 41), (20, 41), (20, 43), (14, 46), (11, 46), (0, 43), (-6, 38), (-6, 30)]}

no results are returned at all.

The issue seems to affect OC products more than SST ones....

I hope this helps with debugging.

Best regards
Vega

Good afternoon
Thank you for your reply.
To answer your questions:-
1/ I have attached a screenshot (20260507) of my Earthdata search today.
Filters used: Temporal - 07/05/2025, Spatial SW -36 NE -28, Keywords: Oceans - Ocean Chemistry - Organic Carbon, Ocean Temperature.
Instruments: MODIS, VIIRS
Processing Levels: 2 - Geophys. Variables, ...
As you can see in the screenshot, only 15 matching collections were retrieved. No VIIRS or MODIS OC NRT data collections were showing at all. In addition, only the Suomi - NPP VIIRS, Terra MODIS and Aqua MODIS SSTs were showing. NOAA-20 VIIRS SST was not shown.
2/ Regarding an apparent, unavailable data date range, I have attached a second screenshot dated 20260501, where 20 collections were showing including Suomi - NPP VIIRS and Terra and Aqua MODIS OC NRT collections, and SSTs using the same filters as above. Since 02/05/2026, the OC data collections have not been showing in the Earthdata search.
NOAA-20 VIIRS SST was also not showing. The last time that the NOAA-20 VIIRS Level-2 Regional 11µm Daytime Sea Surface Temperature(SST) - Near Real-time (NRT) Data was showing in the Earthdata search was on 14/02/2026.
3/ There was no operation fail/pause/or disconnect.

I hope this info helps. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Kind Regards
Sharon

Dears,

the issue appears to have been resolved since yesterday (2026-05-12, early afternoon CEST).

The Earthaccess Python module is now again returning an up-to-date list of the expected files.

Thanks to who worked on the fix

Best Regards
Vega

Dear Vega

Thank you for your reply.
Yes, I was very pleased yesterday morning to see that I was able to download OC files from the Earthdata search.
Thanks to all who worked on the fix.

Kind regards
Sharon