Ingest and Analysis of NPP-VIIRs data from the NOAA CLASS system: Radiometric Calibration, Bow Tie Correction and Derived Dataset support in the ENVI COTS Software

The NPP-VIIRS mission provides crucial data to the meteorological community. Previously, access to imagery stored in a scientific data format such as HDF-5, required some familiarity with the format, finding a reader, or some level of programming to process the data. The ENVI COTS software added support for VIIRS data delivered from the NOAA CLASS system in its 5.0.3 release. This development allowed users to open VIIRS Sensor Data Records (SDRs) in a point and click user interface with no a priori information about the dataset or the file format. Options for opening and processing the data include: •Automatically opening I-bands, M-bands, Day-Night-Band (DNB), and the Near-Constant-Contrast (NCC) Environmental data record (EDR) •Automatic calibration to radiance, reflectance, brightness temperature or albedo (depending on the data product) •Optional Swath-to-Grid geocorrection with elimination of bow-tie deletion artifacts for SDRs •Automatic granule merging to remove swath gap lines for (EDRs) •Opening derived EDRs such as Aerosol Optical Thickness, Land Surface Temperature, Active Fires, Ocean Color/Chlorophyll, Sea Surface Temperature, Surface Type, and Vegetation Indices •Scripting of these preceding processes to allow users to work with many NPP-VIIRS scenes Accessing complex file types in a straightforward manner is the first step towards scientific discovery. The ENVI software makes VIIRS data accessible and usable to virtually anyone who can operate a modern software user interface, thereby opening up VIIRS data to a wider user group supporting broader weather applications in commerce, insurance, agriculture, and disaster response.