VNP21A1N: Nightly Global Land Surface Temperature at 1km

NASA/NOAA's VIIRS/NPP Land Surface Temperature/Emissivity Daily L3 Global 1km SIN Grid Night V002 (VNP21A1N) is a daily, global satellite-derived dataset. It provides nighttime land surface temperature and emissivity values at a 1-kilometer resolution, processed from VIIRS sensor data on the Suomi NPP satellite. The product is algorithmically compatible with MODIS LST data to ensure continuity in Earth observation records.

Use Cases

• Monitoring urban heat island intensity based on nightly land surface temperature (LST) measurements.
• Assessing drought conditions and soil moisture through thermal anomalies derived from LST and emissivity bands.
• Validating climate and weather models using the quality-controlled, gridded temperature data.
• Studying diurnal temperature cycles by combining this nighttime product with complementary daytime observations.

Strengths

• Provides daily, global coverage, enabling high-frequency temporal analysis.
• Algorithm is synergistic with the established MODIS LST product (MOD21A1N), promoting data continuity.
• Includes seven science variables (e.g., LST, quality control, three emissivity bands) for multi-faceted analysis.

Limitations

• Metadata for row count, size, and specific column names is unavailable across all sources.
• The dataset description notes a known issue with increased occurrences of extreme high-temperature outliers in unfiltered data.
• Data is limited to nighttime observations only.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Daily Level 2 Gridded (L2G) swath data is mapped to a sinusoidal grid, with final LST calculated as a weighted average of cloud-free observations exceeding a 15% coverage threshold.

Freshness

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

Geography

Global coverage on a sinusoidal (SIN) grid.