Google Earth Engine
Freemium
Planetary-scale geospatial analysis in the cloud — the data catalogue and compute behind modern water remote sensing.
NASA Earthdata Search
ActiveThe unified search portal across every NASA Earth-observation archive — SRTM, MODIS, SMAP, GPM, GRACE and more.
by NASA
- Pricing
- Gov-Public
- License
- US Government (public domain); free Earthdata Login required
- Commercial use
- Permitted
- Ecosystem
- Browser, Earthdata API
- Platform
- Web
About NASA Earthdata Search
Earthdata Search is NASA's unified discovery and download portal spanning more than 54,000 collections across all of EOSDIS's distributed archive centres — LP DAAC, GES DISC, NSIDC, PO.DAAC and the rest — covering the majority of the NASA-sourced datasets in this collection (SRTM, MODIS products, SMAP, GPM IMERG, MERRA-2, GRACE) through a single search interface with spatial/temporal filtering and direct download or cloud access.
For anyone not yet sure which specific NASA archive holds the data they need, Earthdata Search is the sensible starting point rather than guessing which DAAC to visit directly; a free Earthdata Login account is required to download.
Where it fits in the workflow
TerrainCatchmentRainfallRunoffRoutingHydraulicsMappingReporting
Alternatives to NASA Earthdata Search
Ranked by the topics, categories and workflow stages they share with NASA Earthdata Search.
Microsoft Planetary Computer
Freemium
A STAC API and Jupyter environment over petabytes of satellite data — Sentinel, Landsat, MODIS, ERA5, CHIRPS and more.
CHIRPS
Free
Gauge-blended satellite rainfall at 0.05°, daily, since 1981 — the standard for drainage work in data-sparse regions.
GPM IMERG
Gov-Public
NASA's 30-minute, 0.1° global precipitation record — the highest time resolution of any satellite rainfall product.
PERSIANN-CDR
Free
A neural-network satellite rainfall climate data record, daily, 0.25°, purpose-built for long-term trend studies.
geemap
Open Source
Python + Google Earth Engine without the pain — interactive mapping and analysis of petabyte-scale water data.