Introduction to NASA’s "Black Marble" Night Lights Data

At night, satellite images of Earth capture a uniquely human signal - artificial lighting. Remotely-sensed lights at night provide a new data source for improving our understanding of interactions between human systems and the environment. NASA has developed the Black Marble, a daily calibrated, corrected, and validated product suite, so night light data can be used effectively for scientific observations. Black Marble is playing a vital role in research on light pollution, illegal fishing, fires, disaster impacts and recovery, and human settlements and associated energy infrastructures. The data (originally retrieved from the VIIRS day night band sensor) has been corrected by multiple novel algorithms, providing high-quality, cloud-free, atmospheric-, terrain-, vegetation-, snow-, lunar-, and stray light-corrected nighttime radiances.

This webinar focuses on building the skills needed to choose the appropriate night lights product, acquire and understand Black Marble data, and use the data in analyses for tracking urbanization, electrification, and disaster monitoring.

Learning Objectives: By the end of this training, attendees will:

- Understand the new capabilities of NASA's Black Marble product suite and which product categories (VNP46A1 vs. VNP46A2) to use for different science applications.

- Learn the basics of how to acquire information in Black Marble nighttime lights data.

- Interpret Black Marble science data sets (SDS), quality flags, and create time-series analyses.

- Apply products in topics relevant to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), e.g., tracking urbanization, disaster recovery, and electrification.

Relevant UN Sustainable Development Goals:

- Goal 7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all

- Goal 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable (Target 11.5)