VNP09A1: 8-Day Global Land Surface Reflectance at 1km

VIIRS/NPP Surface Reflectance 8-Day L3 Global 1km SIN Grid V002 provides atmospherically corrected land surface reflectance estimates from the NASA/NOAA Suomi NPP satellite. The dataset includes nine spectral bands at a nominal 1-kilometer resolution, along with quality assurance layers and viewing geometry angles. Each pixel represents the best observation selected over an 8-day period based on high coverage, low sensor angle, and absence of clouds or aerosols.

Use Cases

• Monitoring vegetation health based on atmospherically corrected reflectance bands.
• Assessing land surface changes over time using the 8-day composite time series.
• Deriving vegetation indices (e.g., VNP13) using the corrected surface reflectance values.
• Studying surface bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) and albedo (e.g., VNP43) using the quality-assured reflectance and viewing angle layers.
• Analyzing aerosol loading impacts on surface reflectance using the corrected aerosol quantity flag.

Strengths

• Data is atmospherically corrected for gases and aerosols, improving accuracy for land surface studies.
• Version 2 includes improved calibration, geolocation accuracy, and aerosol flag corrections over bright surfaces.
• Each 8-day composite pixel is selected based on multiple quality criteria, including cloud absence and low sensor angle.

Limitations

• Metadata completeness is medium; specific column names and dataset size are not provided across platforms.
• One source lists nine reflectance bands while another mentions fifteen, indicating a potential conflict in layer count.
• The nominal 1km resolution is derived from resampling native 750m data, which may limit fine-detail analysis.

Provenance

Source

NASA/NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) VIIRS sensor, processed by LPCLOUD.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing, with Level 2G observations composited over 8-day periods.

Freshness

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

Geography

Global coverage on a 1km sinusoidal grid.