The Black Marble layer and the Black Marble – Nighttime Lights only layer is a nighttime view of the Earth, showing visible light emanating from anthropogenic sources such as city lights and other human-driven patterns. The Black Marble layer is an improvement over the "Earth At Night 2012: VIIRS City Lights 2012" layer, providing a look at anthropogenic light sources only, stripping out other nighttime light sources such as auroras, airglow and reflected moonlight from desert, snow, and other natural features. The layers are a composite of data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument on board the joint NASA/NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite. The image composite was assembled from clear, cloud free images for 2012 and 2016. The Black Marble layer is a base layer which includes the land masses, the Black Marble – Nighttime Lights only layer overlay only shows the nighttime lights.
Currently, the Black Marble imagery is available only as a single snapshot in time for 2012 and 2016. The sensor resolution is 750 m and the image resolution is 500 m. The imagery can be visualized in Worldview/Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS).
References: NASA Earth Observatory: Night Light Maps Open Up New Applications
Temporal coverage: 3 December 2016 - present
The VIIRS Nighttime Imagery (Day/Night Band, Enhanced Near Constant Contrast) layer shows the earth’s surface and atmosphere using a sensor designed to capture low-light emission sources, under varying illumination conditions. It is displayed as a grey-scale image. Sources of illumination include both natural and anthropogenic sources of light emissions. Lunar reflection can be used to highlight the location and features of clouds and other terrestrial features such as sea ice and snow cover when there is partial to full moon conditions. When there is no moonlight, natural and anthropogenic night time light emissions are highlighted such as city lights, lightning, auroras, fires, gas flares, and fishing fleets. This layer is useful for showing patterns of human activity and energy behaviors such as cities and highways, the holiday periods, the tracking of shipping and fishing fleets at night and, the burning of waste natural gas (gas flares) from on and off shore oil/gas production sites.
The VIIRS Nighttime Imagery (Day/Night Band, Enhanced Near Constant Contrast) layer is available from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the joint NASA/NOAA Suomi National Polar orbiting Partnership (SNPP) satellite. The sensor resolution is 750 m at nadir, imagery resolution is 500 m, and the temporal resolution is daily.
References: Lee, T., S. Miller, F. Turk, C. Schueler, R. Julian, S. Deyo, P. Dills, and S. Wang, 2006: The NPOESS VIIRS Day/Night Visible Sensor. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 87, 191–199, doi: 10.1175/BAMS-87-2-191; The Lights of London. NASA Earth Observatory; Out of the Blue and Into the Black. NASA Earth Observatory; Román, M. O. and Stokes, E. C. (2015), Holidays in lights: Tracking cultural patterns in demand for energy services. Earth's Future, 3: 182–205. doi:10.1002/2014EF000285
The Earth at Night layer is a night time view of the Earth, showing visible light emanating from sources such as city lights, gas flares, wildfires, auroras and reflected moonlight. The image is a composite of data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument on board the joint NASA/NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite. The image composite was assembled from clear, cloud free images from 9 days in April 2012 and 13 days in October 2012.
The Earth at Night imagery is available only as a single snapshot in time. The sensor resolution is 750 m and the image resolution is 500 m. The imagery can be visualized in Worldview/Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS). The imagery can be downloaded from NASA Earth Observatory/Visible Earth.
References: Visible Earth - Night Lights 2012 - Flat Map