Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/VJ143DNBA3
VJ143DNBA3·v002·dataset

How much sunlight the land reflects, daily (VIIRS NOAA-20, 1 km)

VIIRS/JPSS1 DNB BRDF/Albedo Albedo Daily L3 Global 1km SIN Grid V002
land NASA LPCLOUD Level 3 active HDF-EOS5
In plain English

What it measures. Reports how much sunlight the land surface reflects each day at about 1 km detail, including both the share bounced straight back at noon and the total reflectance averaged over all sky directions.

How it's made. Produced from 16 days of night-and-day-band measurements by the VIIRS instrument on the NOAA-20 satellite, processed with a reflectance model and centered on the ninth day.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for climate and energy-balance studies that need to know how bright the land is, and it continues the long MODIS reflectance record so trends can be tracked across instruments.

What's measured

LAND SURFACE › SURFACE RADIATIVE PROPERTIES › REFLECTANCELAND SURFACE › SURFACE RADIATIVE PROPERTIES › ALBEDOLAND SURFACE › SURFACE RADIATIVE PROPERTIES › ANISOTROPY

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2018-01-05 → ongoing
  • Measured byNOAA-20 (VIIRS)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsHDF-EOS5
  • StatusACTIVE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

The NOAA-20 Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day/Night Band (DNB) Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) and Albedo (VJ143DNBA3) Version 2 product provides albedo values at 1 kilometer (km) resolution for the bihemispherical reflectance white-sky albedos (WSA) and directional hemispherical reflectance black-sky albedos (BSA) at local solar noon. The VJ143DNBA3 product is produced daily using 16 days of VIIRS data and is weighted temporally to the ninth day, which is reflected in the file name. The VJ143 data products are designed to promote the continuity of NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) BRDF/Albedo data product suite. The VJ143 algorithm uses the RossThick/Li-Sparse-Reciprocal (RTLSR) semi-empirical kernel-driven BRDF model, with the three kernel weights from [VJ143DNBA1](https://doi.org/10.5067/VIIRS/VJ143DNBA1.002) to reconstruct surface anisotropic effects, correcting the directional reflectance to a common view geometry ([VJ143DNBA4](https://doi.org/10.5067/VIIRS/VJ143DNBA4.002)), while also computing integrated black-sky albedo (BSA) at local solar noon and white-sky albedo (WSA) (VJ143DNBA3). 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) variables 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 VJ143DNBA3 product provides BSA, WSA, and mandatory quality variables for the VIIRS DNB. A low-resolution image is also available showing retrievals of WSA for the shortwave broadband in JPEG format. Known Issues * For complete information about known issues please refer to the [MODIS/VIIRS Land Quality Assessment website](https://landweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/knownissue?sensor=VIIRS).

Get the data

vj143dnba3_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="VJ143DNBA3",
    version="002",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from LPCLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.