VIIRS/SNPP Level-2 Water Vapor Products 6-min Swath 750m

The Suomi NPP VIIRS Water Vapor Products provide total column water vapor (TPW) properties from merged VIIRS infrared measurements and CrIS plus ATMS water vapor soundings to continue the depiction of global moisture at high spatial resolution started with MODIS on the Terra and Aqua platforms. While MODIS has two water vapor channels within the 6.5 μm H2O absorption band and four channels within the 15 micrometer CO2 absorption band, VIIRS has no channels in either IR absorption band. The VNPWATVP algorithm is similar to the MODIS MOD07 synthetic regression algorithm. It uses the three VIIRS longwave IR window bands in a regression relation and adds the NUCAPS (CrIS+ATMS) water vapor product to compensate for the absence of VIIRS water vapor channels. The Level-2 6-minute granule and 750 m spatial resolution VIIRS TPW product file includes the collocated NUCAPS background TPW, the VIIRS-only TPW, and VIIRS+NUCAPS TPW retrievals with quality flags.