VIIRS/NPP Surface Reflectance: Daily Global Climate Grid

Global land surface reflectance data is provided daily at a 0.05-degree resolution from the Suomi NPP VIIRS sensor. The dataset includes twelve reflectance bands, five brightness temperature bands, and auxiliary information layers, corrected for atmospheric gases and aerosols. It is formatted as a Climate Modeling Grid for use in climate simulation models and is produced for daytime land conditions only.

Use Cases

• Climate model initialization and validation based on daily surface reflectance grids.
• Land surface monitoring and change detection based on corrected reflectance bands I1-I3 and M1-M11.
• Atmospheric correction algorithm assessment based on the documented input products and correction methods.
• Diurnal cycle studies of land surface properties based on the included solar and sensor zenith angles.

Strengths

• Provides near real-time (NRT) daily data, suggesting low latency for time-sensitive applications.
• Includes 17 distinct data layers (12 reflectance, 5 brightness temperature, plus auxiliary angles and quality flags).
• Data is corrected for specific atmospheric effects, including gases (ozone, water vapor) and aerosols.

Limitations

• Critical metadata such as row count, file size, and specific column names are not provided by any source.
• Data is only produced for daytime land conditions, with no coverage for night or oceans.
• Sources conflict on license information, with some specifying 'other-license-specified' and others 'None'.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing, with atmospheric correction using inputs from VIIRS L2 products and reanalysis data.

Freshness

2026-04-09 20:56:03.429539

Geography

Global