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Full catalog/VNP46A3
VNP46A3·v2·dataset

Nighttime lights, monthly (VIIRS, Suomi-NPP)

VIIRS/NPP Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Monthly L3 Global 15 arc second Linear Lat Lon Grid V2
biosphere NASA LAADS Level 3 active HDF5
In plain English

What it measures. Monthly maps of how brightly Earth glows at night, capturing artificial light from cities and other human activity, corrected for moonlight and atmospheric effects.

How it's made. Composited from the highly light-sensitive Day-Night Band on Suomi-NPP's VIIRS sensor, averaged over each month and corrected for the Moon and atmosphere.

How & where you'd use it. Used to study urban growth, electrification, economic activity, and changes in human settlement over time.

What's measured

BIOSPHERE › SPECTRAL/ENGINEERING › VISIBLE WAVELENGTHS › VISIBLE RADIANCE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2012-01-01 → ongoing
  • Measured bySuomi-NPP (VIIRS)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsHDF5
  • StatusACTIVE

What you can do with it

  • Map vegetation, forests and biomass
  • Monitor ecosystem productivity and carbon
  • Support habitat and biodiversity studies
Official description

The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) supports a Day-Night Band (DNB) sensor that provides global daily measurements of nocturnal visible and near-infrared (NIR) light that are suitable for Earth system science and applications. The VIIRS DNB’s ultra-sensitivity in lowlight conditions enable us to generate a new set of science-quality nighttime products that manifest substantial improvements in sensor resolution and calibration when compared to the previous era of Defense Meteorological Satellite Program/Operational Linescan System’s (DMSP/OLS) nighttime lights image products. Such improvements allow the VIIRS DNB products to better monitor both the magnitude and signature of nighttime phenomena, and anthropogenic sources of light emissions. VNP46A3 is the short-name for the monthly composited, moonlight- and atmosphere-corrected Nighttime Lights (NTL) product whose long-name is VIIRS/NPP Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Monthly L3 Global 15 arc second Linear Lat Lon Grid. It contains 28 Science Data Sets (SDS). This v2.0 VNP46A3 collection is provided in standard Hierarchical Data Format–Earth Observing System (HDF-EOS5) format, and starts from January 1, 2012. This product has been validated through various field campaigns of opportunity supported under the Group on Earth obs. (GEO) Human Planet Initiative’s Nighttime Product Validation (NPV) task. Additionally, the VNP46 product suite comes with ancillary and quality assessment layers indicating sources of error from the calibration, cloud mask, snow flag, and lunar irradiance, etc.

Get the data

vnp46a3_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="VNP46A3",
    version="2",
    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 LAADS
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.