STAR Joint Polar Satellite System Algorithms & Data Products website National Oceanographic & Atmospheric Administration website NOAA Center for Satellite Applications and Research website
Suomi NPP Day Night Band image - Alaska, 3/29/2016 - click to enlarge

Suomi NPP Day Night Band image - Alaska, 3/29/2016 - click to enlarge

Imagery

Team Lead: Bill Line

Product Description

Imagery enables weather forecasters to discern environmental phenomena (by either manual analysis or automated algorithms) within the visible, near-infrared and infrared, portions of the spectrum. Imagery is also used as digital input to remote sensing algorithms which produce other environmental measurements. Imagery is required by meteorologists to verify the validity and accuracy of numerical weather prediction analyses and forecasts.

VIIRS EDR Imagery:

  • Geo-spatial mapping: remapped to the Ground Track Mercator (GTM) grid, eliminating overlapping pixels and bowtie deletions
  • Visible and IR bands: radiances, and brightness temperatures or reflectances
  • Day/night band (NCC Imagery): a pseudo-albedo derived from the DNB by normalizing the large radiance contrast in DNB from day to night

VIIRS Imagery EDR is a Priority 1 product:

  • Key Performance Parameters (KPPs) Imagery bands: I1, I3, I4, I5, M14, M15, M16, and DNB/NCC
  • KPP: For latitudes greater than 60 N in the Alaskan region
  • non-KPP Imagery bands: I2, M1, M4, M9

Product and Data Access

Products and data:

EDR Long Term-Monitoring

Documentation

VIIRS Imagery EDRs:

  VIIRS Band Wavelength (µm) Spatial Resolution Nadir/Edge-of-Scan (km)
KPP Imagery bands I1 0.60 - 0.68 0.4/0.8
I3 1.58 - 1.64 0.4/0.8
I4 3.55 - 3.93 0.4/0.8
I5 10.5 - 12.4 0.4/0.8
M14 8.4 - 8.7 0.8/1.6
M15 10.263 - 11.263 0.8/1.6
M16 11.538 - 12.488 0.8/1.6
DNB (NCC Imagery) 0.5 - 0.9 0.8
non-KPP Imagery bands I2 0.846 - 0.885 0.4/0.8
M1 0.402 - 0.422 0.8/1.6
M4 0.545 - 0.565 0.8/1.6
M9 1.371 - 1.386 0.8/1.6

Users

NRL-Monterey uses of VIIRS: NexSat; VIIRS Cal/Val

NEIC-Boulder Earth Observation Group (EOG): VIIRS

Alaska and other NWS users; AWIPS

NIC, NHC, JTWC, US State Department/foreign governments

Future Improvements

  • NCC Terrain Corrected geo-locations needed for all Imagery EDRs: Lack of terrain correction impacts any land surface application of VIIRS Imagery
  • New DNB aggregation modes for end of swath pixels for JPSS-1, resulting in extended swath and offset of nadir
  • Desire to have all VIIRS SDRs produced as EDRs, currently only 6 of 16 M-bands are Imagery EDRs