The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) sensor provides a unique global remote sensing dataset that ranges from the 1980s to the present. Over the years, several efforts have been made on the calibration of the different instruments to establish a consistent land surface reflectance time-series and to augment the AVHRR data record with data from other sensors, such as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). In this paper, we present a summary of all the corrections applied to the AVHRR surface reflectance and NDVI Version 4 Product, developed in the framework of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Data Record (CDR) program. These corrections result from assessment of the geolocation, improvement of cloud masking, and calibration monitoring. Additionally, we evaluate the performance of the surface reflectance over the AERONET sites by a cross-comparison with MODIS, which is an already validated product, and evaluation of a downstream leaf area index (LAI) product. We demonstrate the utility of this long time-series by estimating the winter wheat yield over the USA. The methods developed by Becker-Reshef et al. (2010) and Franch et al. (2015) are applied to both the MODIS and AVHRR data. Comparison of the results from both sensors during the MODIS-era shows the consistency of the dataset with similar errors of 10%. When applying the methods to AVHRR historical data from the 1980s, the results have errors equivalent to those derived from MODIS.

Global reservoir information can not only benefit local water management but can also improve our understanding of the hydrological cycle. This information includes water area, elevation, and storage; evaporation rate and volume values; and other characteristics. However, operational wall-to-wall reservoir storage and evaporation monitoring information is lacking on a global scale. Here we introduce NASA’s new MODIS/VIIRS Global Water Reservoir product suite based on moderate resolution remote sensing data—the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). This product consists of 8-day (MxD28C2 and VNP28C2) and monthly (MxD28C3 and VNP28C3) measurements for 164 large reservoirs (MxD stands for the product from both Terra (MOD) or Aqua (MYD) satellites). The 8-day product provides area, elevation, and storage values, which were generated by first extracting water areas from surface reflectance data and then applying the area estimations to the pre-established Area–Elevation (A–E) relationships. These values were then further aggregated to monthly, with the evaporation rate and volume information added. The evaporation rate and volume values were calculated after the Lake Temperature and Evaporation Model (LTEM) using MODIS/VIIRS land surface temperature product and meteorological data from the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS). Validation results show that the 250 m area classifications from MODIS agree well with the high-resolution classifications from Landsat (R² = 0.99). Validation of elevation and storage products for twelve Indian reservoirs show good agreement in terms of R² values (0.71–0.96 for elevation, and 0.79–0.96 for storage) and normalized root-mean-square error (NRMSE) values (5.08–19.34% for elevation, and 6.39–18.77% for storage). The evaporation rate results for two reservoirs (Lake Nasser and Lake Mead) agree well with in situ measurements (R² values of 0.61 and 0.66, and NRMSE values of 16.25% and 21.76%). Furthermore, preliminary results from the VIIRS reservoir product have shown good consistency with the MODIS based product, confirming the continuity of this 20-year product suite. This new global water reservoir product suite can provide valuable information with regard to water-sources-related studies, applications, management, and hydrological modeling and change analysis such as drought monitoring.

This study presents the new version of MODIS/Terra + Aqua Surface Radiation Daily/3-h downward shortwave radiation (DSR) (MCD18A1 V6.2) and photosynthetic active radiation (PAR) (MCD18A2 V6.2) product generated by MODIS adaptive processing system (MODAPS) using the latest version of the science algorithm developed by the NASA MODIS land science team. Key improvements in the new algorithm include using multiple bands covering visible, near-infrared, and shortwave infrared to enhance the capability of characterizing cloud optical characteristics, especially over snow-covered surfaces, and adopting linear interpolation for temporal scaling from instantaneous to 3-hourly retrievals. Comparative validation against MCD18 V6.1 and clouds and the Earth’s radiant energy system synoptic (CERES-SYN) demonstrates that V6.2 significantly improves accuracy at instantaneous, 3-hourly, and daily scales, particularly in snow-covered regions. The root mean square error (RMSE) (relative RMSE: rRMSE) of V6.2 reaches 101.9 W/m2 (18.8%) and 48.4 W/m2 (20.8%) for instantaneous DSR and PAR. The RMSE (rRMSE) reaches 29.9 W/m2 (16.9%) and 14.1 W/m2 (18.4%) for daily DSR and PAR, respectively. Aggregated to 100 km, V6.2 matches CERES-SYN accuracy using only polar-orbiting satellite data. This study also explores the potential for future improvement by integrating geostationary observations to enhance accuracy further.