NASA’s Black Marble Multiangle Nighttime Lights Temporal Composites

Wang, Zhuosen; Shrestha, Ranjay; Román, M. O.; Kalb, Virginia

doi:10.1109/lgrs.2022.3176616

Cited by 18 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 29 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…A related finding is that the production of a VIIRS Black Marble near-nadir output product based on data taken within 20 • of the nadir is a good choice in terms of limiting the variation between observations and also between sites when correcting for nadir angle [18]. Although the resulting mean radiance does not directly enable the true value of emission to be determined, processed data will, at least, be consistent in that the assumption of a Lambertian dependence is closely met over the limited range sampled.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Real-World Urban Light Emission Functions and Quantitative Comparison with Spacecraft Measurements

2023

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We provide quantitative results from GIS-based modelling of urban emission functions for a range of representative low- and mid-rise locations, ranging from individual streets to residential communities within cities, as well as entire towns and city regions. Our general aim is to determine whether lantern photometry or built environment has the dominant effect on light pollution and whether it is possible to derive a common emission function applicable to regions of similar type. We demonstrate the scalability of our work by providing results for the largest urban area modelled to date, comprising the central 117 km2 area of Dublin City and containing nearly 42,000 public lights. Our results show a general similarity in the shape of the azimuthally averaged emission function for all areas examined, with differences in the angular distribution of total light output depending primarily on the nature of the lighting and, to a smaller extent, on the obscuring environment, including seasonal foliage effects. Our results are also consistent with the emission function derived from the inversion of worldwide skyglow data, supporting our general results by an independent method. Additionally, a comparison with global satellite observations shows that our results are consistent with the deduced angular emission function for other low-rise areas worldwide. Finally, we validate our approach by demonstrating very good agreement between our results and calibrated imagery taken from the International Space Station of a range of residential locations. To our knowledge, this is the first such detailed quantitative verification of light loss calculations and supports the underlying assumptions of the emission function model. Based on our findings, we conclude that it should be possible to apply our approach more generally to produce estimates of the energy and environmental impact of urban areas, which can be applied in a statistical sense. However, more accurate values will depend on the details of the particular locations and require treatment of atmospheric scattering, as well as differences in the spectral nature of the sources.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Real-World Urban Light Emission Functions and Quantitative Comparison with Spacecraft Measurements

2023

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“…Moreover, countries close to the Arctic Circle (e.g., United Kingdom, Russia, and Canada) have most of their regions at latitudes with high auroral activity, which causes NTL data to differ significantly from the actual light emission values in these regions. As a result, these aurora-contaminated pixels were filled with gap-filling values [63]. Although the uncertainty in VNP46A4 had not been completely eliminated after the data preprocessing described above, such as the residuary background noise and insensitivity to near-blue wavelengths, the level of impact is slight enough to be competent for subsequent analysis based on numerical statistics.…”

Section: Remote Sensing Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Research Progress, Hotspots, and Evolution of Nighttime Light Pollution: Analysis Based on WOS Database and Remote Sensing Data

et al. 2023

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With the rapid development of the global economy, the over-expansion of outdoor artificial light at night (ALAN) in cities has led to increasingly severe light pollution worldwide. More and more studies have paid attention to the problem of light pollution, but there is still a lack of systematic literature review on nighttime light pollution in terms of research progress, hotspots, and its evolutions. For this purpose, this study firstly analyzed current research actuality and trends about nighttime light pollution via a comprehensive retrospect of pertinent literature and summarized the adverse effects and monitoring technologies of light pollution by VOSviewer-based keyword co-occurrence technique. Additionally, the study explored the variation tendency of nighttime light pollution in typical countries from 2013 to 2021 based on remote-sensing data and further proposed management suggestions to protect the nighttime environment. The results indicate that the research popularity of nighttime light pollution has been increasing recently, especially after the opening of diversified remote-sensing data in 2012; the main research topics are dominated by adverse effects and monitoring technologies, where the latter is represented by ground survey and remote-sensing observation; the total levels of ALAN intensity are relatively high in most developed countries, but the mean and per capita values are decreasing, and the above phenomenon in developing countries show the opposite trend. This study expects to integrate the literature analysis method and remote-sensing data to demonstrate the research status and variation trends of nighttime light pollution systematically so as to provide scientific references for the assessment and management of the nighttime light environment.

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“…There is a growing body of evidence that there are view angle effects on the brightness of lighting observed from space (Li et al, 2022;Tan et al, 2022;Wang et al, 2022). The view angle effects arise from building and shielding geometries that have yet to be fully explored.…”

Section: Concepts For Future Nighttime Lights Satellite Sensorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Elvidge et al (Elvidge et al, 2020) developed a method for flattening view angel effects in VIIRS DNB temporal profiles and found that there are four main styles of view angle effects: 1) Flat with little-or-no view angle effects, 2) Brighter when viewed from the side, 3) Brighter when viewed at nadir, and 4) Peak-at-nadir. NASA's Black Marble team has begun producing multi-angle cloud-free temporal composites to further explore the information content associated with view angle variations in the brightness of lights observed from space (Wang et al, 2022). Recent studies have pointed out the potential value in having consistently collected variable view angle nighttime lights data collected on urban areas (Kyba et al, 2021).…”

Section: Concepts For Future Nighttime Lights Satellite Sensorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fifty years of nightly global low-light imaging satellite observations

Elvidge

Baugh²,

Ghosh³

et al. 2022

Front. Remote Sens.

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The history of satellite remote sensing of nighttime lights traces it is roots back the U.S. Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) which began flying polar orbiting satellites with cloud imaging sensors in the 1970’s. The meteorologists found that they could improve weather predictions with visible and thermal band imagery. The visible band channels on early DMSP satellites worked well in the daytime—but were unable to see clouds at nights. Visible band low light imaging was added in the mid-1970’s using photomultiplier tubes to amplify the signal, enabling the detection of moonlit clouds. In 1992, NOAA established a digital archive for DMSP data at the National Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. The Earth Observation Group (EOG) was formed in 1994 and dedicated it is efforts to making global nighttime light data products for uses by the science and policy communities. Many of the shortcomings of DMSP data were addressed with the NASA/NOAA Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) day/night band (DNB), which opened a new era in nighttime light studies. In total, EOG has produced 65 annual global nighttime light products and over 650 monthly products.

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NASA’s Black Marble Multiangle Nighttime Lights Temporal Composites

Cited by 18 publications

References 29 publications

Real-World Urban Light Emission Functions and Quantitative Comparison with Spacecraft Measurements

Real-World Urban Light Emission Functions and Quantitative Comparison with Spacecraft Measurements

Research Progress, Hotspots, and Evolution of Nighttime Light Pollution: Analysis Based on WOS Database and Remote Sensing Data

Fifty years of nightly global low-light imaging satellite observations

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