Imagery
Team Lead: Don Hillger
Product Description
Imagery enables weather forecasters to discern environmental phenomena (by either manual analysis or automated algorithms) within the visible, near-infrared and infrared, portions of the spectrum. Imagery is also used as digital input to remote sensing algorithms which produce other environmental measurements. Imagery is required by meteorologists to verify the validity and accuracy of numerical weather prediction analyses and forecasts.
VIIRS EDR Imagery:
- Geo-spatial mapping: remapped to the Ground Track Mercator (GTM) grid, eliminating overlapping pixels and bowtie deletions
- Visible and IR bands: radiances, and brightness temperatures or reflectances
- Day/night band (NCC Imagery): a pseudo-albedo derived from the DNB by normalizing the large radiance contrast in DNB from day to night
VIIRS Imagery EDR is a Priority 1 product:
- Key Performance Parameters (KPPs) Imagery bands: I1, I3, I4, I5, M14, M15, M16, and DNB/NCC
- KPP: For latitudes greater than 60 N in the Alaskan region
- non-KPP Imagery bands: I2, M1, M4, M9
Product and Data Access
VIIRS Imagery EDRs:
VIIRS Band | Wavelength (µm) | Spatial Resolution Nadir/Edge-of-Scan (km) | |
---|---|---|---|
KPP Imagery bands | I1 | 0.60 - 0.68 | 0.4/0.8 |
I3 | 1.58 - 1.64 | 0.4/0.8 | |
I4 | 3.55 - 3.93 | 0.4/0.8 | |
I5 | 10.5 - 12.4 | 0.4/0.8 | |
M14 | 8.4 - 8.7 | 0.8/1.6 | |
M15 | 10.263 - 11.263 | 0.8/1.6 | |
M16 | 11.538 - 12.488 | 0.8/1.6 | |
DNB (NCC Imagery) | 0.5 - 0.9 | 0.8 | |
non-KPP Imagery bands | I2 | 0.846 - 0.885 | 0.4/0.8 |
M1 | 0.402 - 0.422 | 0.8/1.6 | |
M4 | 0.545 - 0.565 | 0.8/1.6 | |
M9 | 1.371 - 1.386 | 0.8/1.6 |
Users
NRL-Monterey uses of VIIRS: NexSat; VIIRS
NEIC-Boulder Earth Observation Group (EOG): VIIRS
Alaska and other NWS users; AWIPS
Future Improvements
- NCC Terrain Corrected geo-locations needed for all Imagery EDRs: Lack of terrain correction impacts any land surface application of VIIRS Imagery
- New DNB aggregation modes for end of swath pixels for JPSS-1, resulting in extended swath and offset of nadir
- Desire to have all VIIRS SDRs produced as EDRs, currently only 6 of 16 M-bands are Imagery EDRs