All SNPP VIIRS forward processing has been temporarily suspended due to a GPS anomaly issue that began on July 9, 2024. An attempt to restore nominal conditions is expected within the next week. However, data may still be held for additional testing and quality assurance before public release. For more details, users may also refer to the VIIRS alerts posted here.
VIIRS Version 1 (Collection 1) snow and sea ice data sets will cease forward processing on June 17, 2024. The Version 1 data will remain available for download, but users are encouraged to transition to VIIRS Version 2. VIIRS Version 2 includes new snow, sea ice, and ice surface temperature data sets from both the NASA/NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-20 (NOAA-20) satellite.
This data set contains daily snow cover derived from radiance data acquired by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on board the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite. The data is a gridded composite, generated from 6 minute swaths, and projected to a 375 m Sinusoidal grid. Snow cover is identified using the Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI) and a series of screens designed to alleviate errors and flag uncertain snow cover detections.
Parameter(s):
SNOW COVER
Platform(s):
SUOMI-NPP
Sensor(s):
VIIRS
Data Format(s):
HDF-EOS5
Temporal Coverage:
19 January 2012 to present
Temporal Resolution:
Not Specified
Spatial Resolution:
375 m
375 m
Spatial Coverage:
N:
90
S:
-90
E:
180
W:
-180
Blue outlined yellow areas on the map below indicate the spatial coverage for this data set.
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Data products from VIIRS are created to be similar to MODIS data products to ensure the continuity needed for the development of snow and sea ice climate records beyond the life expectancy of MODIS. The temporal resolution and spatial extent are identical in MODIS and VIIRS.
The lag time between observations and availability of VIIRS products is only a few days. Lag time may be extended due to satellite maneuvers and extra quality assurance required for the geolocation data after the maneuver.
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