VIIRS/JPSS2 BRDF/Albedo Albedo Daily L3 Global 500m SIN Grid V002

The NOAA-21 Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) and Albedo (VJ243IA3) Version 2 product provides albedo values at 500 meter (m) resolution for the bihemispherical reflectance white-sky albedo (WSA) and directional hemispherical reflectance black-sky albedo (BSA) at local solar noon. The VJ243IA3 product is produced daily using 16 days of VIIRS data and is weighted temporally to the ninth day, which is reflected in the file name. The VJ243 data products are designed to promote the continuity of NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) BRDF/Albedo data product suite.

The VJ243 algorithm uses the RossThick/Li-Sparse-Reciprocal (RTLSR) semi-empirical kernel-driven BRDF model, with the three kernel weights from ([VJ243IA1](https://doi.org/10.5067/VIIRS/VJ243IA1.002)) to reconstruct surface anisotropic effects, correcting the directional reflectance to a common view geometry ([VJ243IA4](https://doi.org/10.5067/VIIRS/VJ243IA4.002)), while also computing integrated black-sky albedo (BSA) at local solar noon and white-sky albedo (WSA) (VJ243IA3). Researchers can use the BRDF model parameters with a simple polynomial, to obtain black-sky albedo at any solar illumination angle. Likewise, both the BSA and WSA Science Dataset (SDS) variables can be used with a simple polynomial, to manually estimate instantaneous actual albedo (blue-sky albedo). Additional details regarding the methodology are available in the Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document (ATBD).

The VJ243IA3 product provides a total of 9 SDS variables including: BSA, WSA, and mandatory quality variables for VIIRS imagery bands I1, I2, and I3. A low-resolution browse image is also available showing retrievals of WSA for band I1 in JPEG format.

Known Issues:

* For complete information about known issues please refer to the [MODIS/VIIRS Land Quality Assessment website](https://landweb.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/knownissue?sensor=VIIRS&sat=J2).