Abstract. Detection and characterization of aerosols is inherently limited at night due to a lack of sensitivity—information typically provided by visible spectrum observations. The VIIRS Day/Night Band (DNB) onboard the Suomi-NPP satellite is a first-of-its-kind calibrated sensor capable of collecting visible/near-infrared observations during both day and night. Multiple studies have suggested that anthropogenic light emissions such as those from cities and gas flares may be useable as light sources for retrieval of atmospheric properties including cloud and aerosol optical depth. However, their use in this capacity requires proper characterization of their intrinsic variation, which represents a source of retrieval uncertainty. In this study we use 18 months of cloud-cleared VIIRS data collected over five selected geographic domains to assess the stability of anthropogenic light emissions and their response to varied satellite and lunar geometries. Timeseries are developed for each location in each domain for DNB radiance, four infrared channels, and satellite and lunar geometric variables, and spatially-resolved correlation coefficients are computed between DNB radiance and each of the other variables. This analysis finds that while many emissive light sources are too unstable to be used reliably for atmospheric retrievals, some sources exhibit a sufficient stability (relative standard deviation
Characterization of linear light sources with the smartphone’s ambient light sensor