The VIIRS/JPSS2 Albedo Daily L3 Global 1 km SIN Grid Near Real Time (NRT), short-name VJ243MA3N product provides albedo values at 1 km resolution for the bi-hemispherical reflectance white-sky albedos (WSA) and directional hemispherical reflectance black-sky albedos (BSA) at local solar noon. The VJ243MA3N product is produced daily using 16-day VIIRS data (i.e., the current day and the previous 15 days).

The algorithm uses the RossThick/Li-Sparse-Reciprocal (RTLSR) semi-empirical kernel-driven BRDF model, with the three kernel weights from VJ243MA1N to reconstruct surface anisotropic effects, correcting the directional reflectance to a common view geometry (VJ243MA4N), while also computing integrated black-sky albedo (BSA) at local solar noon and white-sky albedo (WSA) (VJ243MA3N). Researchers can use the BRDF model parameters with a simple polynomial, to obtain black-sky albedo at any solar illumination angle. Likewise, both the BSA and WSA Science Dataset (SDS) layers can be used with a simple polynomial, to manually estimate instantaneous actual albedo (blue-sky albedo). Additional details regarding the methodology are available in the Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document (ATBD)

The VJ243MA3N product provides a total of 36 SDS layers including: BSA, WSA, and mandatory quality layers for nine VIIRS moderate bands: M1-M5, M7-M8, and M10-M11, as well as three broadbands: near-infrared (NIR), shortwave infrared (SWIR), and visible (VIS).