Suomi satellite brings to light a unique frontier of nighttime environmental sensing capabilities

Miller, Steven D.; Mills, Stephen P.; Elvidge, Christopher D.; Lindsey, Daniel T.; Lee, Thomas F.; Hawkins, Jeffrey D.

doi:10.1073/pnas.1207034109

Cited by 239 publications

(163 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…The follow on to DMSP for global low-light imaging of the Earth at night is the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day/Night Band (DNB), flown jointly by NASA and NOAA. The VIIRS DNB provides several key improvements over DMSP-OLS data, including a vast reduction in the pixel footprint (ground instantaneous field of view [GIFOV]), uniform GIFOV from nadir to edge of scan, lower detection limits, wider dynamic range, finer quantization, and in-flight calibration (Miller et al 2012;Elvidge et al 2013;Miller et al 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

VIIRS night-time lights

Elvidge

Baugh

Zhizhin³

et al. 2017

International Journal of Remote Sensing

677

405

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The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day/Night Band (DNB) collects global low-light imaging data that have significant improvements over comparable data collected for 40 years by the DMSP Operational Linescan System. One of the prominent features of DNB data is the detection of electric lighting present on the Earth's surface. Most of these lights are from human settlements. VIIRS collects source data that could be used to generate monthly and annual science grade global radiance maps of human settlements with electric lighting. There are a substantial number of steps involved in producing a product that has been cleaned to exclude background noise, solar and lunar contamination, data degraded by cloud cover, and features unrelated to electric lighting (e.g. fires, flares, volcanoes). This article describes the algorithms developed for the production of high-quality global VIIRS night-time lights. There is a broad base of science users for VIIRS night-time lights products, ranging from land-use scientists, urban geographers, ecologists, carbon modellers, astronomers, demographers, economists, and social scientists. ARTICLE HISTORY

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

VIIRS night-time lights

Elvidge

Baugh

Zhizhin³

et al. 2017

International Journal of Remote Sensing

677

405

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Here, the only source of ambient illumination is nightglow (chemiluminescent airglow) and all other natural illumination from sources other than the sun, the moon or auroras, including, stellar light and zodiacal light. [1,3]. Even by this faint illumination which resides at 10% of the minimum required DNB radiance …”

Section: Observations For Nighttime Scenesmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Figure 12 shows an image from 28 May 2014 taken by DNB. It is northwest of thunderstorms and depicts gravity waves modulating the intensity of airglow emissions in the upper atmosphere [3,38]. This image has been destriped using the histogram matching method described below.…”

Section: Half-angle Mirror Side Differencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since the launch of S-NPP, the low-light detection capabilities of VIIRS DNB have opened new areas of research including the detection of nightglow and features illuminated by nightglow [2,3] and development of long-term climate data records. Because of these new areas, the required quality of DNB data has been pushed beyond the originally intended design limits.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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VIIRS Day/Night Band—Correcting Striping and Nonuniformity over a Very Large Dynamic Range

Mills¹,

Miller

2016

J. Imaging

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Abstract:The Suomi National Polar-orbiting (NPP) Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day-Night Band (DNB) measures visible and near-infrared light extending over seven orders of magnitude of dynamic range. This makes radiometric calibration difficult. We have observed that DNB imagery has striping, banding and other nonuniformities-day or night. We identified the causes as stray light, nonlinearity, detector crosstalk, hysteresis and mirror-side variation. We found that these affect both Earth-view and calibration signals. These present an obstacle to interpretation by users of DNB products. Because of the nonlinearity we chose the histogram matching destriping technique which we found is successful for daytime, twilight and nighttime scenes. Because of the very large dynamic range of the DNB, we needed to add special processes to the histogram matching to destripe all scenes, especially imagery in the twilight regions where scene illumination changes rapidly over short distances. We show that destriping aids image analysts, and makes it possible for advanced automated cloud typing algorithms. Manual or automatic identification of other features, including polar ice and gravity waves in the upper atmosphere are also discussed. In consideration of the large volume of data produced 24 h a day by the VIIRS DNB, we present methods for reducing processing time.

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“…VIIRS data are being used to detect and monitor forest fires. Exploitation of the VIIRS Day Night band resulted in new discoveries, including demonstrating the use of VIIRS DNB for examining tropical storm structure at night for improved short-term forecasting and a recent discovery of applications of the DNB under moonless skies for meteorological applications [Miller et al, 2012].…”

Section: The First 2 Years Of Snpp-summarymentioning

confidence: 99%

Joint Polar Satellite System: The United States next generation civilian polar‐orbiting environmental satellite system

Goldberg¹,

Kilcoyne²,

Cikanek³

et al. 2013

JGR Atmospheres

183

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NOAA's next generation polar‐orbiting environmental satellite system, designated as the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), was proposed in February 2010, as part of the President's Fiscal Year 2011 budget request, to be the Civilian successor to the restructured National Polar‐Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). Beginning 1 October 2013, the JPSS baseline consists of a suite of five instruments: advanced microwave and infrared sounders critical for short‐ and medium‐range weather forecasting; an advanced visible and infrared imager needed for environmental assessments such as snow/ice cover, droughts, volcanic ash, forest fires and surface temperature; ozone sensor primarily used for global monitoring of ozone and input to weather and climate models; and an Earth radiation budget sensor for monitoring the Earth's energy budget. NASA will fund the Earth radiation budget sensor and the ozone limb sensor for the second JPSS operational satellite—JPSS‐2. JPSS is implemented through a partnership between NOAA and the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NOAA is responsible for overall funding; maintaining the high‐level requirements; establishing international and interagency partnerships; developing the science and algorithms, and user engagement; NOAA also provides product data distribution and archiving of JPSS data. NASA's role is to serve as acquisition Center of Excellence, providing acquisition of instruments, spacecraft and the multimission ground system, and early mission implementation through turnover to NOAA for operations.

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Suomi satellite brings to light a unique frontier of nighttime environmental sensing capabilities

Cited by 239 publications

References 38 publications

VIIRS night-time lights

VIIRS night-time lights

VIIRS Day/Night Band—Correcting Striping and Nonuniformity over a Very Large Dynamic Range

Joint Polar Satellite System: The United States next generation civilian polar‐orbiting environmental satellite system

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