Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/VNP17A3GF
VNP17A3GF·v002·dataset

How much carbon plants store each year (VIIRS, 500 m)

VIIRS/NPP Gross and Net Primary Production Gap-Filled Yearly 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 take in and store over a full year, reported as gross and net plant productivity, with a quality flag.

How it's made. Generated from the VIIRS instrument on Suomi-NPP at 500 m resolution, calculated once a year and gap-filled by smoothing over low-quality readings, so it isn't available in real time.

How & where you'd use it. Helps researchers track the land's role in the carbon cycle and feed into models of energy, water, and vegetation processes.

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 and Net Primary Production (NPP) Gap-Filled (VNP17A3GF) Version 2 product is a cumulative composite of Gross Primary Productivity (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. VNP17A3GF is a yearly composite at 500 meter (m) spatial resolution delivered as a gridded Level 4 (L4) product in Sinusoidal projection. The VNP17A3GF will be generated at the end of each year when the entire yearly 8-day VNP15A2H is available. Hence, the gap-filled VNP17A3GF 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 VNP17A3GF in near-real time because it will be generated only at the end of a given year. Provided in the VNP17A3GF product are three variables for GPP, NPP, along with a quality control variable. A low resolution browse image for GPP is also available for each VNP17A3GF 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

vnp17a3gf_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="VNP17A3GF",
    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.