Space2Stats Monthly & Annual Black Marble Nighttime Lights

These datasets contain nighttime light statistics for the entire world aggregated to the 2nd administrative division (ADM2) level on a monthly and annual basis; the datasets are affiliated with the Space2Stats program. Nighttime lights data comes from NASA’s Black Marble, where nighttime lights are originally at a 15 arc second resolution (approximately 500 meters). The ADM2 layer where nighttime lights are aggregated to comes from the World Bank Official Boundaries dataset. The main Space2Stats database aggregates data to hexagons, which can further be aggregated to administrative units. This dataset differs in the aggregation approach: nighttime light values are directly aggregated to ADM2 layers (not first aggregated to hexagons). The dataset includes statistics derived from all nighttime lights with an administrative zone, as well as nighttime lights only including and excluding areas near gas flaring sites. Gas flaring location data comes from the “2012-2024 Flare Volume Estimates by Individual Flare Location” dataset produced by the World Bank. The dataset also includes variables summarizing the quality of nighttime lights data that were used to produce statistics (monthly and annual composites of nighttime lights are derived from daily observations; clouds and other issues can result in some days being discarded from monthly and annual composites).