VNP43D65: VIIRS Black-Sky Albedo for Shortwave Broadband

NASA/NOAA's VNP43D65 Version 1 was a daily, global land surface albedo product derived from the Suomi NPP VIIRS sensor. It provided Black-Sky Albedo for the shortwave broadband (1.61 μm) at a 30 arc-second (1,000 meter) Climate Modeling Grid resolution, synthesized from 16 days of observations. This dataset was decommissioned on July 31, 2025, with users directed to newer Version 2 products.

Use Cases

• Parameterizing surface reflectance in climate simulation models based on the global Climate Modeling Grid (CMG) structure.
• Analyzing temporal trends in land surface shortwave albedo using the daily, 16-day composite data.
• Studying surface anisotropy and radiative properties for the VIIRS shortwave broadband and Day/Night Band.

Strengths

• Provides global coverage on a standardized Climate Modeling Grid designed for climate simulations.
• Offers high spatial resolution (30 arc-second, ~1km) for albedo data.
• Based on a well-defined methodology from the VIIRS BRDF/Albedo product suite, with details in an Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document.

Limitations

• Dataset is decommissioned (as of July 31, 2025), indicating it is a legacy product with known issues, such as an abnormally high aerosol flag activation.
• Critical metadata like row count, file size, and specific column names are unavailable across all sources.
• Each product file contains only one data layer due to large file sizes, which may complicate multi-band analysis.

Provenance

Source

NASA/NOAA Suomi NPP VIIRS sensor, processed by LPCLOUD.

Collection Method

Daily product generated using 16 days of VIIRS data, temporally weighted to the ninth day.

Time Range

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Freshness

2026-04-09 20:56:46.684135

Geography

Global