Changelogs¶

ESA Climate Change Initiative Land Cover¶

The ESA Climate Change Initiative Land Cover datasets consistent global annual land cover maps at 300m spatial resolution from 1992 to 2020. There are collections containing Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs and NetCDF files.

This is a timelapse from 1992-2020 over the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil and Bolivia:

NOAA Climate Normals¶

The NOAA US Climate Normals datasets provide information about typical climate conditions for thousands of weather station locations across the United States.

The individual weather station data is contained in the noaa-climate-normals-tabular colleciton, which contains tabular data in GeoParquet format.

Additionally, there is gridded data provided in the collections noaa-climate-normals-gridded, which contains Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs, and noaa-climate-normals-netcdf which contains NetCDF files.

Note that this dataset resides in the East US Azure region.

Cropland Data Layer¶

The USDA Cropland Data Layer is a crop-specific land cover classification product of more than 100 crop categories grown in the United States.

USGS Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection¶

The USGS Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection (LCMAP) datasets provide land cover mapping and change monitoring from the U.S.

There are two datasets; one containing “Collection 1.3” data for the Conterminous United States (usgs-lcmap-conus-v13) and another containing “Collection 1.0” data for Hawaii (usgs-lcmap-hawaii-v10)

This is a timelapse from 1985-2021 over California’s Plumas National Forest:

National Wetlands Inventory¶

The FWS National Wetlands Inventory collection contains more than 35 million wetland and deepwater features. This dataset covers the conterminous United States, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, the major Northern Mariana Islands and Alaska.

NOAA GOES updates¶

• GOES-18 data is now available in the Cloud Moisture Index (goes-cmi) collection.

• Additional data products for GOES that are not yet in the API are documented in the catalog: Fire Detection and Characterization (FDC), Land Surface Temperature (LST), Rainfall Rate and Quantitative Precipitation Estimation (RRQPE), and Sea Surface Temperature (SST)

• The goes-cmi collection now has a render configuration that utilizes infrared data to better visualize night-time scenes. See this example in the Explorer.

Other dataset updates¶

• TerraClimate was updated to include the latest data from the producer, the Climatology Lab. The dataset now covers 1958 - 2021. Note that some variables, such as the station influence variables, are no longer provided. The Zarr store linked from the STAC collection is at a new URL. The data at the old URL will be deleted sometime in the future. In addition, the STAC metadata now includes the latest updates from the xarray-assets STAC extension.

• The NOAA National Water Model data products, which are hosted but not yet fully integrated into the API, are now documented in the data catalog.

• Using new functionality in stactools, the footprints in the ASTER collection have been update to better match the actual image data, rather than the full raster extent.

• Collections now have an msft:region property, which indicates the Azure Region in which the data is hosted.

• The Microsoft Building Footprints dataset can now be visualized in the Explorer, using the vector rendering feature described above.

Item preview mode¶

The default map view for search results is a mosaic of all the items included in the search. This is useful for quickly getting an overview of the data available, but it can be difficult to see individual items in the mosaic. Since mosaics default to layering the most recent results on top, it may obscure older items in the mosaic. Or, varying atmospheric conditions may result in incongruent seams where the mosaic has applied pixels from different partially overlapping items.

To help with this, we’ve added a new “Item Preview” mode to the map view. When activated, this mode locks the current search and will render just the selected item from the search results. Since the search is locked, you can pan and zoom the map without affecting the result list. You can select a different item from the search results to preview it on the map, or use the map control to move to the next or previous item in the search results. Using the map control, you can also zoom to the current item’s footprint on the map or return to the original search viewport.

To activate, click the map icon button on the thumbnail image of any search result:

Here’s an example of using Item Preview mode to view sequential search result items showing the progression of the devastating floods in Pakistan from late 2022 using Sentinel-1 RTC.

Generate a timelapse GIF for a dataset mosaic¶

Many of our datasets have a temporal component, and it can be interesting to see how the data changes over time. We’ve added a new feature to the Explorer app that allows you to generate a timelapse GIF for any dataset mosaic that has a temporal dimension. You can control the time increment, area of interest, and frame speed of the GIF. The timelapse export will use the current search parameters and render options to generate the GIF, so experiment with the settings to get a good result. To use the feature, open the overflow menu on the search results header and select “Generate timelapse animation”

Using a timelapse is another way to view sequential items, similar to the Item Preview feature. Using the same example for the Sentinel-1 RTC dataset, this GIF also shows the progression of the floods in Pakistan from late 2022.

Our Landsat C2 L2 dataset goes back to 1982 in many places, and is a good example of how you can use the timelapse feature to see how the landscape has changed over time. Here’s a timelapse GIF of the Landsat C2 L2 dataset for the area around the city of Las Vegas, Nevada.

Generate a static image of a dataset mosaic¶

Similar to the timelapse export, you can also generate a static image of a dataset mosaic. This is useful for creating an image of a dataset for a report, presentation, to use as a background, or to share on social media. To use the feature, open the overflow menu on the search results header and select “Generate snapshot image”.

Adjust the settings to control the area of interest and image size, then click “Generate image” to download the image.

You can also use this to create great Microsoft Teams backgrounds! Use the “Large (1920 x 1080)” image size to clip out your favorite view and set it as your background in Teams. If you want to automate the generation of Teams backgrounds - and don’t mind a bit of codebase setup - check out the https://github.com/microsoft/planetary-computer-teams-background repository, which uses the Planetary Computer APIs to auto-rotate with the latest imagery of Sentinel 2 from the Planetary Computer.

Advanced filter allows settings time in ranges¶

You can now specify time (in UTC) for date ranges in the Advanced date field filter. This is especially useful for frequently updating datasets like GOES-CMI, where you may want to filter for a specific time range. To use the feature, enable the Advanced filter and open the date field dropdown.

Along with filtering on time, all search results now include the time in their display to help better identify individual items.

Ability to change sort order of search results¶

Last but now least, we’ve also added a sort direction selector for search results. You can now sort the results by date ascending or descending. This not only sorts the results list, but also the order of items applied to the mosaic on the map.

GOES-R Lightning Detection¶

GOES-R Lightning Detection: Continuous lightning detection over the Western Hemisphere from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) instrument.

NOAA MRMS QPE¶

• NOAA MRMS QPE 1-Hour Pass 1: Integrated multi-sensor cumulative precipitation estimate for the past hour with a 1-hour latency.

• NOAA MRMS QPE 1-Hour Pass 2: Integrated multi-sensor cumulative precipitation estimate for the past hour with a 2-hour latency.

• NOAA MRMS QPE 24-Hour Pass 2: Integrated multi-sensor cumulative precipitation estimate for the past 24 hours with a 2-hour latency.

NOAA Monthly NClimGrid¶

NOAA Monthly NClimGrid: Monthly Climate Gridded dataset with data on temperature and precipitation.

Denver Regional Council of Governments Land Use Land Cover¶

Denver Regional Council of Governments Land Use Land Cover: 1-ft resolution land use / land cover dataset around Denver, Colorado.

Chesapeake Land Cover/Land Use¶

Chesapeake Land Cover (7-class): 1-meter land cover data product for the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed with a uniform set of 7 land cover classes.

Chesapeake Land Cover (13-class): 1-meter land cover data product for the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed with 13 varying land cover classes.

Chesapeake Land Use: 1-meter land use data product for the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed.

STAC API¶

• Updated the STAC API to v1.0.0-rc.1

• Initial support for queryables in the STAC API. See Sentinel-2-l2a for an example. Additional queryables and more metadata description in coming releases.

• Scalability and performance improvements.

Data API¶

• Upgrades to pgstac-titiler 0.1.0a7

• Scalability and performance improvements.

STAC API¶

Data API¶

New API datasets¶

• GPM IMERG: A time series of precipitation over the majority of the earth.

• 10m Annual Land Use Land Cover (9-class): A time series of annual global maps of land use and land cover.

• Earth Exchange Global Daily Downscaled Projections: Global downscaled climate scenarios derived from the General Circulation Model runs conducted under the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6.

• Land Cover of Canada: Collection of Land Cover products for Canada as produced by Natural Resources Canada using Landsat satellite imagery.

• Chloris Biomass: Estimates of stock and change in aboveground biomass for Earth’s terrestrial woody vegetation ecosystems.

• gNATSGO Soil Database: A composite database that provides complete coverage of the best available soils information for all areas of the United States and Island Territories.

New Blob Storage datasets¶

• We’ve added Deltares Global Flood Maps and Global Water Supply datasets to our blob storage catalog.

Support for batch workflows¶

The Planetary Computer Hub is now integrated with kbatch to run asynchronous / batch workflow jobs, complementing JupyterHub’s support for interactive computing. See the kbatch overview and the kbatch documentation for more.

New package versions¶

The Planetary Computer Hub has been upgraded to use container images from the planetary-computer-containers 2022.01.17.0 release. In particular, this release includes

• pystac-client 0.3.2, with support for cql2-json queries

• leafmap 0.7.2, with support for adding STAC items from the Planetary Computer’s STAC catalog and tiling with the Planetary Computer’s data API

See the release notes for the changes in the various packages provided in the Planetary Computer’s environment.

STAC API¶

Data API¶

New datasets¶

• GOES-R ABI L2 Cloud & Moisture Imagery: This dataset provides 16 bands from the ABI instrument aboard the GOES-16 and GOES-17 satellites. We provide both NetCDF and COG data assets. More GOES-R products are coming soon!

• ALOS DEM: a 30-meter resoluation global digital surface model.

• Copernicus DEM: a global digital surface model available at both 30- and 90-meter resolution.

• Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF): records of species occurrences from a wide array of sources including specimen-related data from natural history museums, observations from citizen science networks, and automated biodiversity surveys.

• US Census 2020: information on population and geographic boundaries at various levels of cartographic aggregation.

• gridMET: a dataset of daily surface meteorological data covering the contiguous United States at ~4km resolution.

• USFS Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA): Status and trends on U.S. forest location, health, growth, mortality, and production.

New package versions¶

The Planetary Computer Hub has been upgraded to use container images from the planetary-computer-containers 2021.09.27.0 release. Among other changes, these container images include

• pystac-client 0.3.0b1

• dask-geopandas 0.1.0a4

• planetary-computer 0.4.2

See the release notes for the changes in the various packages provided in the Planetary Computer’s environment.

STAC API¶

Data API¶

This is a new API that provides titiler endpoints for our STAC Items. There are also collection tile endpoints for some datasets. See the Data API docs for a list of endpoints available. These endpoints are not available for all Collections and Items. For Collections and Items that have visualization endpoints, assets are added for TileJSON and links for simple Leaflet map previews are added by the STAC API. For example, https://planetarycomputer.microsoft.com/api/data/v1/collection/map?collection=io-lulc is the preview link for the new Esri 10-Meter Land Cover dataset.

The Data API should be considered in an alpha state - expect updates and breaking changes in the future.

New datasets¶

The following datasets are now available in our data catalog and STAC API:

• Daymet Collection: gridded estimates of weather parameters for North America, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico at daily, monthly, and annual temporal resolutions

• Esri 10-Meter Land Cover: a 10-meter resolution map of Earth’s land surface from 2020

• HREA: High Resolution Electricity Access: settlement-level measures of electricity access, reliability, and usage derived from VIIRS satellite imagery

• MTBS: Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity: annual burn severity mosaics for the continental United States and Alaska

• MoBI: Map of Biodiversity Importance: habitat information for 2,216 imperiled species occurring in the conterminous United States

• NASADEM HGT v001: global topographic data at 1 arc-second (~30m) horizontal resolution, derived primarily from data captured via the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission

• TerraClimate: global monthly climate and climatic water balance

• USGS 3DEP Seamless DEMs: high-quality topographic data and for a wide range of other three-dimensional (3D) representations of natural and constructed features in the United States

• USGS Gap Land Cover: US-wide land cover information for 2011

Changes to existing datasets¶

• New items from Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8 are now continuously available through the STAC API

• Changed the item IDs for Sentinel-2 Level-2A and Landsat 8 Collection 2 Level-2 to not include the processing date

• Fixed issues with missing Sentinel-2 scenes

• Fixed various quality issues with some Landsat 8 scenes by updating to the most recently processed version available from USGS

• Fixed Landsat 8 STAC item footprints being off by half a pixel

New package versions¶

Some of these package updates include API breaking changes. We recommend reading through the relevant changelogs:

• pystac

• pystac-client

• planetary-computer