Extending the DMSP Nighttime Lights Time Series beyond 2013

Abstract

Data collected by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program’s Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) sensors have been archived and processed by the Earth Observation Group (EOG) at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to make global maps of nighttime images since 1994. Over the years, the EOG has developed automatic algorithms to make Stable Lights composites from the OLS visible band data by removing the transient lights from fires and fishing boats. The ephemeral lights are removed based on their high brightness and short duration. However, the six original satellites collecting DMSP data gradually shifted from day/night orbit to dawn/dusk orbit, which is to an earlier overpass time. At the beginning of 2014, the F18 satellite was no longer collecting usable nighttime data, and the focus had shifted to processing global nighttime images from Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day/Night Band (DNB) data. Nevertheless, it was soon discovered that the F15 and F16 satellites had started collecting pre-dawn nighttime data from 2012 onwards. Therefore, the established algorithms of the previous years were extended to process OLS data from 2013 onwards. Moreover, the existence of nighttime data from three overpass times for the year 2013–DMSP satellites F18 and F15 from early evening and pre-dawn, respectively, and the VIIRS from after midnight, made it possible to intercalibrate the images of three different overpass times and study the diurnal pattern of nighttime lights.

Using Multi-Source Nighttime Lights Data to Proxy for County-Level Economic Activity in China from 2012 to 2019

“…Ephemeral lights, such as from fires and flaring, are removed, and processing excludes (at the pixel level) images for nights affected by clouds, moonlight, sunlight, and other glare. The usual stable lights product time-series ended in 2013 [31], but that has now been extended with images from F15 for 2014-19 [46]. The time of night that lighting is observed differs between the extended time-series using F15 (ca.…”

What Can We Learn from Nighttime Lights for Small Geographies? Measurement Errors and Heterogeneous Elasticities

“…Another source of variability across years is that the orbit of the DMSP satellites slowly degrades over time, recording lights at a slightly earlier time each day. This feature has recently been used to extend the DMSP data from 2012 to 2019 using pre-dawn data from older satellites that crossed back into a dawn-dusk orbit [44]. We do not use the extended series as the orbital shift to pre-dawn hours introduces an additional source of measurement error.…”

Fifty years of nightly global low-light imaging satellite observations

“…A similar shift to pre-dawn OLS data collection occurred for satellite F-16. With support from the AFD (Agence Française de Dévelopement), EOG produced an DMSP nighttime lights extension series with pre-dawn nighttime data using the v.4 methods (Ghosh et al, 2021). In addition, VNL v.2 data were resampled to 30 arc second grids and transformed to match the spatial resolution and digital number range of DMSP (Nechaev et al, 2021).…”

“…VNL v.3 DNB temporal profiles grids have been assembled for seventy cities across the North America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa (Figure 14). Several studies based on VNL v.3 temporal profiles have already been published (Ghosh et al, 2021;Nechaev et al, 2021). Spatially extended DNB temporal profile grids have been assembled for VNL v.2 lit grid cells for Kenya, Ghana, and Texas.…”

“…Recently, hourly drone collected over urban areas confirmed that diurnal patterns do exist in lighting (Li et al, 2020). Ghosh et al (Ghosh et al, 2021) examined 2013 nighttime lights data from early-evening DMSP F18 data, after-midnight SNPP data and pre-dawn DMSP F15 data and found in most areas lighting dimmed as the evening progresses. The 2013 analysis is semi-quantitative due to the lack of calibration on the DMSP nighttime lights.…”