Daytime measurements of reflected sunlight in the visible spectrum have been a staple of Earth-viewing radiometers since the advent of the environmental satellite platform. At night, these same optical-spectrum sensors have traditionally been limited to thermal infrared emission, which contains relatively poor information content for many OPEN ACCESSRemote Sens. 2013, 5 6718 important weather and climate parameters. These deficiencies have limited our ability to characterize the full diurnal behavior and processes of parameters relevant to improved monitoring, understanding and modeling of weather and climate processes. Visible-spectrum light information does exist during the nighttime hours, originating from a wide variety of sources, but its detection requires specialized technology. Such measurements have existed, in a limited way, on USA Department of Defense satellites, but the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite, which carries a new Day/Night Band (DNB) radiometer, offers the first quantitative measurements of nocturnal visible and near-infrared light. Here, we demonstrate the expanded potential for nocturnal low-light visible applications enabled by the DNB. Via a combination of terrestrial and extraterrestrial light sources, such observations are always available-expanding many current existing applications while enabling entirely new capabilities. These novel low-light measurements open doors to a wealth of new interdisciplinary research topics while lighting a pathway toward the optimized design of follow-on satellite based low light visible sensors.

2015: Evaluating environmental impacts on tropical cyclone rapid intensification AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY predictability utilizing statistical models. Wea. Forecasting.

Most environmental satellite radiometers use solar reflectance information when it is available during the day but must resort at night to emission signals from infrared bands, which offer poor sensitivity to low-level clouds and surface features. A few sensors can take advantage of moonlight, but the inconsistent availability of the lunar source limits measurement utility. Here we show that the Day/Night Band (DNB) low-light visible sensor on the recently launched Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite has the unique ability to image cloud and surface features by way of reflected airglow, starlight, and zodiacal light illumination. Examples collected during new moon reveal not only meteorological and surface features, but also the direct emission of airglow structures in the mesosphere, including expansive regions of diffuse glow and wave patterns forced by tropospheric convection. The ability to leverage diffuse illumination sources for nocturnal environmental sensing applications extends the advantages of visible-light information to moonless nights.

On many occasions over the centuries, mariners have reported witnessing surreal nocturnal displays where the surface of the sea produces an intense, uniform, and sustained glow that extends to the horizon in all directions. Although such emissions cannot be fully reconciled with the known features of any light-emitting organism, these so-called ''milky seas'' are hypothesized to be manifestations of unusually strong bioluminescence produced by colonies of bacteria in association with a microalgal bloom in the surface waters. Because of their ephemeral nature and the paucity of scientific observations, an explanation of milky seas has remained elusive. Here, we report the first satellite observations of the phenomenon. An Ϸ15,400-km 2 area of the northwestern Indian Ocean, roughly the size of the state of Connecticut, was observed to glow over 3 consecutive nights, corroborated on the first night by a ship-based account. This unanticipated application of satellite remote-sensing technology provides insights pertaining to the formation and scale of these poorly understood events.bacterial bioluminescence ͉ satellite remote sensing ͉ microbial ecology ͉ quorum sensing ͉ marine biology

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