The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Thermal Anomalies (VJ114) Version 2 product is produced in 6-minute temporal satellite increments (swaths) at 750 meter resolution from the VIIRS sensor located on the NOAA-20 satellite. This product is designed after the Terra and Aqua Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Thermal Anomalies and Fire data products to promote the continuity of the Earth Observation System (EOS) mission. This data product can enable users to understand the location and intensity of fire events as well as identifying thermal anomalies.

The VJ114 product includes 31 science dataset layers to analyze key factors in fire detection, including atmospheric conditions (e.g., atmospheric reflectance, solar zenith angle, brightness temperature) and fuel type for the event. The fire mask layer in the VJ114 product is the primary layer and can be used to identify fires and other thermal anomalies such as volcanoes. In addition to the fire mask, brightness temperature is provided for VIIRS channels M5, M7, M11, M13, M15, and M16.

Each swath of data is approximately 3,060 kilometers along track (long) and 3,060 kilometers across track (wide). The VJ114 product is also used to generate higher-level fire data products.

Use of the VJ103MODLL data product is required to apply accurate geolocation information to the VJ114 Science Datasets (SDS).

Known Issues

• For complete information about known issues please refer to the MODIS/VIIRS Land Quality Assessment website and in Section 5.0 “Frequently Asked Questions” of the User Guide.

Improvements/Changes from Previous Version

• Improved calibration algorithm and coefficients for entire NOAA-20 mission.
• Improved geolocation accuracy and applied updates to fix outliers around maneuver periods.
• Corrected the aerosol quantity flag (low, average, high) mainly over brighter surfaces in the mid- to high-latitudes such as desert and tropical vegetation areas. This has an impact on the retrieval of other downstream data products such as VNP13 Vegetation Indices and VNP43 Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF)/Albedo.
• Improved cloud mask input product for corrections along coastlines and artifacts from use of coarse resolution climatology data.
• Replaced the land/water mask input product with the eight-class land/water mask from the VNP03 geolocation product that better aligns with MODIS.
• More details can be found in this VIIRS Land V2 Changes document.