VJ146A1: Daily Nighttime Radiance from NOAA-20 VIIRS

NOAA-20 VIIRS Daily Gridded Day Night Band product VJ146A1 provides top-of-atmosphere, at-sensor nighttime radiance data at 15 arc-second spatial resolution. The dataset contains 26 Science Data Sets including sensor radiance, solar/lunar geometry angles, cloud-mask flags, brightness temperatures, and quality flags for multiple spectral bands. This collection, version 2.0, is available from January 2018 onward and covers both land and water surfaces with radiance stored in floating-point format.

Use Cases

• Mapping urban light pollution and energy consumption based on daily nighttime radiance measurements.
• Monitoring disaster impacts and recovery, such as power outages from storms, using time-series radiance data.
• Studying lunar illumination effects on nighttime observations using the moon phase angle and illumination fraction layers.
• Assessing cloud cover and atmospheric conditions for nighttime remote sensing using the cloud-mask flags and quality information.
• Analyzing thermal anomalies or fires with the included shortwave IR radiance and brightness temperature data.

Strengths

• Contains 26 distinct Science Data Sets (SDS) providing multi-faceted observational data.
• Offers daily global coverage at a consistent 15 arc-second spatial resolution.
• Data collection spans from January 2018 to the present, providing a multi-year time series.
• Version 2.0 improvements include floating-point radiance data and coverage extended to water surfaces.

Limitations

• Specific column names and dataset size (rows/GB) are not provided in any source metadata.
• Sources conflict on the license, with one marking it as 'other-license-specified' and another as 'None'.
• Relies on external documentation (Black Marble User Guide) for full technical details.

Provenance

Source

LAADS (Level-1 and Atmosphere Archive & Distribution System) / NASA.

Collection Method

Satellite observations from the NOAA-20 spacecraft's VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) Day Night Band sensor.

Time Range

January 2018 onward.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-09 according to nasa_earthdata and datagov.

Geography

Global coverage.