Suomi NPP VIIRS Imagery Update

The VIIRS EDR imagery Team continues to be involved in both the checkout of Suomi NPP VIIRS Imagery, as well as preparations for the use of VIIRS from JPSS-1 and 2. VIIRS EDR Imagery attainted the Validation 3 maturity stage in 2014, which means that most of the major Imagery issues have been resolved, but the Team's work continues. There is currently more emphasis on the expectations for VIIRS imagery from JPSS-1 in particular. For example, a recent request was made for possible impacts upon VIIRS Imagery related to a lowering of the noise performance in certain JPSS-1 thermal bands.

The Imagery Team continues to press for 2 major improvements that they consider critical to more widespread use of VIIRS Imagery. The first and foremost is a vital reduction in the latency of global VIIRS Imagery, which now may be 6 or 7 hours old by the time it's available for the Imagery Team. Data access is also occasionally slow due to heavy demand for VIIRS by many users. Direct Broadcast (DB) VIIRS partly alleviate this issue, but the DB is only available from selected locations and not globally. The other major issue is that not all the M-bands are currently turned into EDR Imagery, the advantage of which addresses two issues: both the intentional bowtie deletions and remaining overlapping pixels in VIIRS SDR Imagery.

The latter issue is being worked through the appropriate channels by not only firming up the VIIRS EDR Imagery requirements that will be applied to JPSS, but by seeking to add all the M-bands to those requirements. The existing VIIRS requirement documents, which were inherited from the NPOESS world, need to be reworked for JPSS now that SNPP Imagery is available and is a useful guide for JPSS.

Finally, the Imagery Team continues to support other EDR Teams and other users in their applications of the VIIRS Imagery in the analysis and forecast world. Part of that support is a comprehensive VIIRS EDR Imagery Users' Guide that is being prepared as a future NOAA Technical Report (TR), to accompany the NOAA TR produced by the VIIRS SDR Team.

Disclaimer: The views, opinions, and findings contained in this article are those of the authors and should not be construed as an official National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) or U.S. Government position, policy, or decision.