Abstract
Nighttime light (NTL) data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP)/Operational Linescan System (OLS) and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite provide a great opportunity for monitoring human activities from regional to global scales. Despite the valuable records of nightscape from DMSP (1992–2013) and VIIRS (2012–2018), the potential of the historical archive of NTL observations has not been fully explored because of the severe inconsistency between DMSP and VIIRS. In this study, we generated an integrated and consistent NTL dataset at the global scale by harmonizing the inter-calibrated NTL observations from the DMSP data and the simulated DMSP-like NTL observations from the VIIRS data. The generated global DMSP NTL time-series data (1992–2018) show consistent temporal trends. This temporally extended DMSP NTL dataset provides valuable support for various studies related to human activities such as electricity consumption and urban extent dynamics.
Highlights
Background & SummaryThe nighttime light (NTL) data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) - Operational Linescan System (OLS) are a primary data source to measure human activities from local, regional to global scales[1,2,3,4]
The new generation of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) NTL data are advanced in their capacities of monitoring city lights at night, the available temporal span is only available from 2012 to present, resulting in a relatively short period for exploring dynamics of human activities
There are two main difficulties in generating a temporally consistent and up-to-date DMSP NTL time series dataset at the global scale, by integrating NTL observations from DMSP and VIIRS
Summary
Background & SummaryThe nighttime light (NTL) data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) - Operational Linescan System (OLS) are a primary data source to measure human activities from local, regional to global scales[1,2,3,4]. These studies of integrating the NTL data from DMSP and VIIRS are limited (1) at local or regional scales without a global perspective[22,23,24,25] and (2) using specific radiance data rather than the stable DMSP NTL dataset[23].
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