Day/Night Visible Images and Nighttime Lights

Overview

NASA’s Black Marble represents a suite of four Day/Night visible standard products that offer vast improvements in sensor resolution and calibration over the previous era of Defense Meteorological Satellite Program/Operational Linescan System’s nighttime lights image products. Derived from the Suomi NPP VIIRS instrument’s Day-Night Band (DNB) sensor, this suite enables us to better monitor both the magnitude and signature of nighttime phenomena, and anthropogenic sources of light emissions. The first product offers daily, top-of-atmosphere, at-sensor nighttime radiance at 15 arc-second resolution (approximately 500 meters at the equator). The second product provides a daily Nighttime Lights (NTL) product at 15 arc-second resolution that is corrected for lunar bi-directional reflectance distribution function, atmospheric, thermal, terrain, and straylight contamination. The third and fourth products provide monthly and yearly composites generated from the daily atmospherically- and lunar-BRDF-corrected NTL radiance to remove extraneous artifacts and biases, including the influence of viewing angular effects on artificial lights.

Product Information

Product Details

Product Name Suomi NPP
Daily Gridded Day Night Band 500m Linear Lat Lon Grid Night
Gap-Filled Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Daily L3 Global 500m Linear Lat Lon Grid
Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Monthly L3 Global 15 arc second Linear Lat Lon Grid
Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Yearly L3 Global 15 arc second Linear Lat Lon Grid