VJ143D74: White-Sky Albedo for VIIRS Band M10 at 1.61 μm

NOAA-20 VIIRS satellite data provides daily global white-sky albedo measurements for the 1.61 μm infrared band at a 1-kilometer resolution. This specific product, VJ143D74, is part of a suite designed for climate models, using a 16-day rolling composite weighted to a central date. It complements black-sky albedo and reflectance data from other VIIRS spectral bands to characterize surface anisotropy.

Use Cases

• Parameterizing land surface reflectance in climate simulation models based on the Climate Modeling Grid (CMG) format.
• Analyzing temporal changes in surface brightness for the 1.61 μm band, which is sensitive to vegetation and snow.
• Studying surface anisotropy by comparing white-sky albedo (isotropic diffuse) with black-sky albedo (direct) values.
• Incorporating albedo from the VIIRS Day/Night Band (DNB) into nighttime surface property studies.

Strengths

• Provides daily, global coverage at a consistent 30 arc-second (1,000 meter) spatial resolution.
• Data is temporally composited from a 16-day window to reduce noise, with weighting to a central ninth day.
• Cross-platform presence on NASA and Data.gov indicates established provenance and importance for the scientific community.

Limitations

• Metadata completeness is medium; specific column names, row counts, and exact file sizes are not provided in the sources.
• Each product file contains only a single data layer due to large file sizes, requiring multiple files for a full spectral analysis.
• License is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' without explicit terms provided in the input.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), from the NOAA-20 satellite's VIIRS instrument.

Collection Method

Produced daily using a rolling 16-day composite of satellite observations, processed with Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) and Albedo algorithms.

Time Range

Daily production suggests continuous temporal coverage from the NOAA-20 mission start date, but the specific start year is not provided.

Freshness

2026-04-09 21:05:26.233141

Geography

Global coverage.