NOAA-20 VIIRS Daily Global Land Surface Reflectance and Temperature

Global land surface reflectance and brightness temperature data are provided daily at a 0.05-degree resolution from the NOAA-20 VIIRS sensor. This Near Real Time product includes twelve reflectance bands, five temperature bands, and ancillary information layers, processed with atmospheric corrections for gases and aerosols. NASA produces the dataset for use in climate simulation models.

Use Cases

• Monitoring land surface changes using daily reflectance bands (I1-I3, M1-M5, M7, M8, M10, M11).
• Analyzing surface thermal properties with moderate resolution brightness temperature bands (M12-M16).
• Improving climate model inputs using the Climate Modeling Grid (CMG) format and corrected surface reflectance.
• Studying atmospheric aerosol impacts by analyzing the algorithm's use of aerosol optical thickness and cloud mask inputs.
• Assessing observation geometry for radiative transfer studies using layers for relative azimuth, sensor zenith, and solar zenith angles.

Strengths

• Provides data from 12 reflectance and 5 brightness temperature bands for detailed spectral analysis.
• Applies corrections for atmospheric effects from molecular gases (ozone, water vapor) and aerosols.
• Delivers daily, global coverage at a consistent 0.05-degree (~5.6 km) spatial resolution.
• Uses a weighted average of the best quality observations to improve data reliability.

Limitations

• Data is produced for daytime land conditions only, with fill values for night and ocean pixels.
• Key metadata like row count, file size, and precise temporal coverage are not provided across sources.
• License information is inconsistently reported as 'other-license-specified' or null.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Processed from NOAA-20 (JPSS1) Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) sensor data using atmospheric correction algorithms.

Time Range

Daily, Near Real Time (specific start date unknown).

Freshness

2026-03-12 20:00:58.365848

Geography

Global land surface.