The Black Marble 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.

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; 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