VNP21A1D: Daily Global Land Surface Temperature from VIIRS

NASA/NOAA's VIIRS/NPP Land Surface Temperature/Emissivity Daily L3 Global 1km SIN Grid Day V002 dataset provides daily, gridded estimates of land surface temperature and emissivity. The product is compiled from daytime VIIRS swath data, resampled to a 1-kilometer sinusoidal grid, and uses an algorithm compatible with MODIS for continuity. It contains seven science datasets including LST, quality control, emissivity for three spectral bands, view zenith angle, and observation time.

Use Cases

• Monitoring urban heat island intensity based on daily 1km land surface temperature (LST) data.
• Assessing vegetation water stress and drought conditions using emissivity values from bands M14, M15, and M16.
• Validating and calibrating climate models based on the algorithm's compatibility with MODIS Terra and Aqua products.
• Analyzing diurnal land surface energy fluxes using the provided time of observation and view zenith angle data.
• Filtering data for quality assurance using the provided quality control (QC) layer.

Strengths

• Provides continuity with the long-term MODIS LST record, using the same algorithmic approach and input atmospheric products.
• Offers daily global coverage at a 1-kilometer spatial resolution, derived from native 750-meter VIIRS observations.
• Includes multiple validated science datasets (LST, QC, emissivity, angles, time) for each grid cell.

Limitations

• Metadata on row count, file size, and specific license terms is missing or conflicting across platforms.
• The dataset description notes a known issue with increased occurrences of extreme high temperature outliers in unfiltered data.
• Relies on a 15% observation coverage threshold for cell averaging, which may exclude some areas.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) / NOAA Suomi NPP satellite.

Collection Method

Derived from VIIRS sensor swath data using a Level 2 to Level 3 gridding (L2G) and averaging algorithm, as described in the Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document (ATBD).

Time Range

Daily compilation; specific start date not provided.

Freshness

2026-04-09 21:12:52.380086 (from datagov)

Geography

Global coverage on a sinusoidal (SIN) grid projection.