[Gdal-dev] using Goode Homolosine imagery (modis 32 day composites)

[Vincent Schut]

Dears,

Recently I downloaded several image sets of modis 32 day 500m composites of Oceania (from http://glcf.umiacs.umd.edu/data/). These are geotiffs, but coordinate system information is wrong. The right projection information is on http://modis.umiacs.umd.edu/modis500mDescription.htm, where it is stated that the images are in Goode's Homolosine projection, datum&ellps=sphere. Corner coordinates for each of the subsets are also given.
I know Goode is actually a composite projection of several sinusoidal and mollweide subsets, and actually pretty useless except for producing nice looking equal area maps of the entire earth. I also know that proj knows goode as '+proj=goode +ellps=sphere'. However, if I try to correct the projection info or to warp the images, overriding the geotiff projection using one of the gdal utilities (gdal_translate a_srs='+proj=goode +ellps=sphere') I get an error:
Failed to process SRS definition: +proj=goode +ellps=sphere

This also happens if I leave out the '+ellps=sphere' part.

If I however run 'cs2cs +proj=goode +ellps=sphere +to +proj=latlong' I don't get any error.

- is gdal able to use goode's homolosine projection, at least to reproject _from_ it?
- anybody knows another way of correcting the geotiff information in these files? (gdalinfo output is copied at the end of this message)
- or of warping these files to another projection or even latlong?

Here is the gdalinfo output of one of the files:

Driver: GTiff/GeoTIFF
Size is 18200, 15400
Coordinate System is:
PROJCS["unnamed",
    GEOGCS["WGS 84",
        DATUM["WGS_1984",
            SPHEROID["WGS 84",6378137,298.2572235629972,
                AUTHORITY["EPSG","7030"]],
            AUTHORITY["EPSG","6326"]],
        PRIMEM["Greenwich",0],
        UNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433],
        AUTHORITY["EPSG","4326"]],
    UNIT["metre",1,
        AUTHORITY["EPSG","9001"]]]
Origin = (10083500.000000,2374500.000000)
Pixel Size = (500.000000,-500.000000)
Metadata:
  TIFFTAG_SOFTWARE=hdf2geotiff v0.1.0
Corner Coordinates:
Upper Left  (10083500.000, 2374500.000) (577741992d43'2078764171276.60"E,136048828d27'489626271757.73"N)
Lower Left  (10083500.000,-5325500.000) (577741992d43'2078764171276.60"E,305128673d47'1099511627824.91"S)
Upper Right (19183500.000, 2374500.000) (1099133586d17'3955664879637.17"E,136048828d27'489626271757.73"N)
Lower Right (19183500.000,-5325500.000) (1099133586d17'3955664879637.17"E,305128673d47'1099511627824.91"S)
Center      (14633500.000,-1475500.000) (838437789d30'3019362009104.88"E,84539922d40'304942678033.59"S)
Band 1 Block=18200x1 Type=UInt16, ColorInterp=Gray

Cheers,
Vincent.