Why are there gaps in a daily Level 3 data file?
Most remote-sensing instruments observe the Earth by scanning across the orbit track, which can be visualized as the line on the Earth surface directly below the orbital path traveled by the satellite. The scan area on either side of this line is called the scan swath. Most remote-sensing instruments do not have a scan swath wide enough so that the observational coverage on successive orbits overlaps. So for each day of observations, there are gaps between the scan swaths. However, the “polar orbit” configuration of many remote-sensing satellites can cause the scan swaths to overlap at higher latitudes, i.e., the polar regions, even though the scan swaths do not overlap over most of the Earth surface.
