The NOAA-20 (identified in its pre-launch phase as the Joint Polar Satellite System-1 (JPSS1)) Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) supports a Day-Night Band (DNB) sensor that provides global daily measurements of nocturnal visible and near-infrared (NIR) light that are suitable for Earth system science and applications. The VIIRS DNB’s ultra-sensitivity in lowlight conditions enables us to generate a new set of science-quality nighttime products that manifest substantial improvements in sensor resolution and calibration when compared to the previous era of Defense Meteorological Satellite Program/Operational Linescan System’s (DMSP/OLS) nighttime lights image products. Such improvements allow the VIIRS DNB products to better monitor both the magnitude and signature of nighttime phenomena, and anthropogenic sources of light emissions.

VJ146A3 is the short-name for the monthly composited, moonlight- and atmosphere-corrected Nighttime Lights (NTL) product whose long-name is VIIRS/JPSS1 Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Monthly L3 Global 15 arc second Linear Lat Lon Grid. It contains 28 Science Data Sets (SDS).

This v2.0 VJ146A3 collection is provided in standard Hierarchical Data Format–Earth Observing System (HDF-EOS5) format, and starts from January 1, 2018. This product has been validated through various field campaigns of opportunity supported under the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Human Planet Initiative’s Nighttime Product Validation (NPV) task. Additionally, the VJ146 product suite comes with ancillary and quality assessment layers indicating sources of error from the calibration, cloud mask, snow flag, and lunar irradiance, etc.