Regional to Global Vegetation Products Derived From JPSS VIIRS Data For Environmental Modeling and Monitoring

Current numerical weather prediction models and land surface monitoring systems require real time and large scale land surface information for modeling initialization. The daily and global observational data provided by Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) with the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) are the available source to obtain the initialization information. The NOAA JPSS Land Team is developing an operational NOAA Vegetation Products System (NVPS) to generate a consistent set of regional (1km) to global (4km) gridded vegetation products based on JPSS VIIRS observational data for future operational use by the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). The NVPS can generate the VIIRS Green Vegetation Fraction (GVF) and Vegetation Index (VI) data at spatial scales of 1km (regional) and 4km (global) and at time resolutions of daily, weekly and biweekly. The VI data include the Top Of the Atmosphere (TOA) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Top Of the Canopy (TOC) NDVI as well as the TOC Enhanced Vegetation Index (TOC EVI). Meanwhile, quality assurances of VI data are generated to consider impact of various environmental factors (e.g., cloudy, sun glint, aerosol). The VIIRS vegetation products will be generated operationally within NOAA’s Suomi NPP Data Exploitation (NDE) system.