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Full catalog/VNP17A2GF
VNP17A2GF·v002·dataset

How much carbon plants capture, gap-filled (Suomi-NPP, 8-day)

VIIRS/NPP Gross Primary Productivity and Net Photosynthesis Gap-Filled 8-Day L4 Global 500m SIN Grid V002
atmosphere NASA LPCLOUD Level 4 active HDF-EOS5
In plain English

What it measures. An estimate of how much carbon plants pull from the air through photosynthesis, mapped globally every 8 days at 500-meter resolution. The 'gap-filled' version cleans up poor-quality spots by interpolating from surrounding good data.

How it's made. Calculated from Suomi-NPP VIIRS satellite measurements of vegetation and sunlight, then processed at year's end to fill in cloudy or low-quality pixels.

How & where you'd use it. Used to study the carbon, water, and energy cycles of land ecosystems and how vegetation productivity shifts over time; note it is not available in near-real-time since it is finalized only annually.

What's measured

ATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR › WATER VAPOR PROCESSES › EVAPOTRANSPIRATIONATMOSPHERE › ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR › WATER VAPOR PROCESSES › EVAPORATIONATMOSPHERE › PRECIPITATION › PRECIPITATION PROFILES › LATENT HEAT FLUXBIOSPHERE › VEGETATION › VEGETATION PRODUCTIVITY

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2012-01-01 → ongoing
  • Measured bySuomi-NPP (VIIRS)
  • Processing levelLevel 4
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsHDF-EOS5
  • StatusACTIVE

What you can do with it

  • Map air pollutants — NO₂, aerosols, ozone
  • Track greenhouse gases and Earth's energy budget
  • Feed weather and air-quality analysis
Official description

The NASA/NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) and Net Photosynthesis (PSN) Gap-Filled (VNP17A2GF) Version 2 product is a cumulative composite of GPP values based on the radiation use efficiency concept that is potentially used as inputs to data models to calculate terrestrial energy, carbon, water cycle processes, and biogeochemistry of vegetation. VNP17A2GF is an 8-day composite at 500 meters (m) spatial resolution delivered as a gridded Level 4 (L4) product in Sinusoidal projection. The VNP17A2GF will be generated at the end of each year when the entire yearly 8-day VNP15A2H is available. Hence, the gap-filled VNP17A2GF is the improved VNP17A2, which has cleaned the poor-quality inputs from 8-day Leaf Area Index and Fraction of Photosynthetically Active Radiation (LAI/FPAR) based on the Quality Control (QC) label for every pixel. If any LAI/FPAR pixel did not meet the quality screening criteria, its value is determined through linear interpolation. However, users cannot get VNP17A2GF in near-real time because it will be generated only at the end of a given year. Provided in the VNP17A2GF product are three variables for GPP, PSN, along with a quality control variable. A low resolution browse image for GPP is also available for each VNP17A2GF granule. 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

vnp17a2gf_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="VNP17A2GF",
    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.