Comprehensive Examples

This page provides comprehensive examples on how to access and visualize various NASA HDF/HDF-EOS files using Python (pyhdf/h5py), NCL, MATLAB^®, and IDL^®. Other tools and programming languages examples can be found here.

Please read this special note first before you proceed further.

You can find examples quickly using the search box below. Please add keyword 'zoo' first to limit the search within this Comprehensive Examples page. Then, type the first few characters from the NASA HDF/HDF-EOS file name such as MOD06. Finally, you can limit the search by providing one of programming language keywords: Ptyhon, NCL, IDL, or MATLAB.

For a list of examples for the different data centers, click on the product name in the table below.

NASA Data Centers	Product Examples using different tools
GES DISC	AIRS TRMM MERRA TOMS OMI MLS HIRDLS BUV SWDB GSSTF GOSAT/ACOS OCO-2 GPM
LAADS	MOD MYD VIIRS
LP DAAC	AST MCD MOD MYD VIP WELD GED VIIRS GEOLST
LaRC	CALIPSO CATS CERES DSCOVR MISR MOPITT POAM3 SAGE III TES
NSIDC	AMSR_E AMSR_U2 MODIS NISE ICESat/GLAS SMAP
PO.DAAC	SMAP SeaWinds QuikSCAT Aquarius OMG ECCO MODIS
Ocean Biology Processing Group	OCTS SeaWiFS CZCS MODISA MODIST VIIRS
GHRC	LIS
ICESat-2	ATL
ASF	SMAP ARIA

Table 1. Sample Data Files and Code Examples

The following table selects MEaSUREs product examples only from the above table.

NASA Data Centers	MEaSUREs Product Examples using different tools
GES DISC	BUV SWDB GSSTF
LP DAAC	VIP WELD

Table 2. Sample MEaSUREs Data Files and Code Examples

We also provide examples for other data centers that produce HDF files.

Other Data Centers	Product Examples using different tools
CloudSAT Data Processing Center	CloudSAT
MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator	MASTER
Ocean Productivity	Net Primary Production
Aura Data Validation Center	OMI

Table 3. Sample Data Files and Code Examples from Other Data Centers

We also extracted and documented information for sample HDF-EOS2/HDF4 and HDF-EOS5/HDF5 files that are useful to determine the EOS contents stored in the sample files. Please click here for HDF-EOS2/HDF4 and here for HDF-EOS5/HDF5 to read comprehensive description and retrieve sample files.

Last modified: 07/10/2023