Current Status of the Terrestrial Environmental Data Products from the Suomi NPP satellite

The six land products generated from Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) measurements on the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) satellite by the Interface Data Processing Segment (IDPS) are surface reflectance, vegetation index, surface albedo, land surface temperature, surface type and active fires. Development and validation activities of these data products are coordinated by formal science teams both within NOAA's and NASA's SNPP programs, with further close collaboration between the two science teams towards high quality data products to serve the needs of a broad range of users. Development and evaluation efforts during the first two years of the SNPP mission have resulted in incremental improvements in product quality and maturity. In addition to improvements in retrieval algorithms, the teams have been focusing on dependencies on input VIIRS Sensor Data Record (SDR) quality, on upstream cloud mask and aerosol products, as well as on internal dependencies within the land product suite. All land products have achieved Beta maturity status and are available for the general user community. By the summer of 2013 the Land Surface Temperature product also achieved Provisional Maturity, while the Active Fires, Surface Reflectance and Vegetation Index products are expected to be declared Provisional in the early fall of 2013. Validation work has included correlative analysis with heritage MODIS products, and increasingly also with in situ and high resolution airborne and satellite observations, working towards common validation datasets and methodologies where possible. Work is continuing to achieve provisional and validated maturity levels, to meet all formal product requirements, and to ensure continuity with high quality products from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) Terra and Aqua satellites.