1. Suomi NPP VIIRS Day Night Band (DNB)
Tropical Cyclone
10P Jasmine Z
0122 (Local)
Infrared
Day Night Band
Suomi NPP day night band (DNB) example for tropical cyclone (TC) 10P (Jasmine) on Feb 7, 2012 (1422Z, local time 0122) located in the south pacific near New Caledonia.
VIIRS IR band image with color table illustrating cold cloud tops associated with the tropical cyclone, with coldest (highest) clouds within the eyewall and the main convective band spiraling into the storm center. (Note the flow is clockwise in TCs within the southern hemisphere).
VIIRS day night band (DNB) image depicting the reflection of lunar illumination from the top most clouds. Note the local time is 0122, thus this nighttime image appears “day-like” due to the nearly full moon conditions. DNB products maintain their spatial resolution across the 3000 km swath (similar to DMSP OLS) but have 14-bit digitization instead of the 6-bit (64 gray shades) available for OLS. Note the ability to view the texture associated with the convective elements with the eyewall and strong rainband on the storm’s east side.
A multi-spectral combination (IR+DNB) enables the user to readily distinguish the low clouds (yellow) and high clouds (light blue) while still retaining the texture in the eyewall associated with the DNB imagery.
Note: No correction has been made yet for variable moon illumination (planned) to create a consistent DNB imagery data set that would be easier to analyze and utilize for quantitative applications.
Acknowledgments:
NPP VIIRS data provided via the U. of Wisconsin Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Studies (CIMSS, Madison, WI) which acquires the data from the NOAA CLASS servers.
This product was created by the Naval Research Laboratory, Marine Meteorology Division, Monterey, CA (NRL-MRY) Satellite Meteorological Applications Section. Special thanks to Jeremy Solbrig, Kim Richardson, and Mindy Surratt (NRL-MRY) and Steve Miller (Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA, Colorado State Univ, Ft. Collins, CO)) for making this capability possible.
IR-DNB
Multi-spectral
Low-clouds: Yellow
Cirrus: Light blue