The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) 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 enable 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.

VNP46A4 is the short-name for the yearly composited, moonlight- and atmosphere-corrected Nighttime Lights (NTL) product whose long-name is VIIRS/NPP Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Yearly L3 Global 15 arc second Linear Lat Lon Grid. It contains 28 Science Data Sets (SDS).

This v2.0 VNP46A4 collection is provided in standard Hierarchical Data Format–Earth Observing System (HDF-EOS5) format, and starts from January 1, 2012. This product has been validated through various field campaigns of opportunity supported under the Group on Earth obs. (GEO) Human Planet Initiative’s Nighttime Product Validation (NPV) task. Additionally, the VNP46 product suite comes with ancillary and quality assessment layers indicating sources of error from the calibration, cloud mask, snow flag, and lunar irradiance, etc.