Impact of Spatial Sampling on Continuity of MODIS MODIS–VIIRS VIIRS Land Surface Reflectance Products: A Simulation Approach
Abstract: With the increasing need to construct long long-term climate-quality quality data records to understand, monitor, and predict climate variability and change, it is vital to continue systematic satellite measurements along with the development of new technology for more quantitative and accurate observations. The Suomi National Polar-orbiting orbiting Partnership mission provides continuity in monitoring the Earth's surface and its atmosphere in a similar fashion as the heritage MODIS instruments onboard the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Terra and Aqua satellites. In this paper, we aim at quantifying the consistency of Aqua MODIS and Suomi-NPP NPP Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Land Surface Reflectance (LSR) and NDVI products as related to their in inherent herent spatial sampling characteristics. To avoid interferences from sources of measurement and/or processing errors other than spatial sampling, including calibration, atmospheric correction, and the effects of the bidirectional reflectance distribution function, f the MODIS and VIIRS LSR products were simulated using the Landsat-8's Landsat Operational Land Imager (OLI) LSR products. The simulations were performed using the instruments' point spread functions on a daily basis for various OLI scenes over a 16-day orbit bit cycle. It was found that the daily mean differences due to discrepancies in spatial sampling remain below 0.0015 (1%) in absolute surface reflectance at subgranule scale (i.e., OLI scene size). We also found that the