Description
The NOAA-20 Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) and Albedo (VJ143IA3) Version 2 product provides albedo values at 500 meter (m) resolution for the bihemispherical reflectance white-sky albedo (WSA) and directional hemispherical reflectance black-sky albedo (BSA) at local solar noon. The VJ143IA3 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 VJ143IA1 to reconstruct surface anisotropic effects, correcting the directional reflectance to a common view geometry (VJ143IA4), while also computing integrated black-sky albedo (BSA) at local solar noon and white-sky albedo (WSA) (VJ143IA3). 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) layers 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 VJ143IA3 product provides a total of 9 SDS layers including: BSA, WSA, and mandatory quality layers for VIIRS imagery bands I1, I2, and I3. A low-resolution browse image is also available showing retrievals of WSA for band I1 in JPEG format.
Known Issues
- For complete information about known issues please refer to the MODIS/VIIRS Land Quality Assessment website.
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.
Product Summary
Citation
Citation is critically important for dataset documentation and discovery. This dataset is openly shared, without restriction, in accordance with the EOSDIS Data Use and Citation Guidance.
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Documents
ALGORITHM THEORETICAL BASIS DOCUMENT (ATBD) | The ATBD provides physical theory and mathematical procedures for the calculations used to produce the data products. | |
PRODUCT QUALITY ASSESSMENT | The LDOPE Land Product Quality Assessment website provides known issues, maneuvers, and product quality of the land products. | |
SCIENCE DATA PRODUCT VALIDATION | Validation at stage 3 has been achieved for the VIIRS BRDF/Albedo product suite. | |
SCIENCE DATA PRODUCT VALIDATION | Further details regarding VIIRS product validation and maturity status are available from VIIRS Land Product Quality Assessment site. | |
USER'S GUIDE | The technical information in the User's Guide enables users to interpret and use the data products. |