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Long-term Australian Daytime AVHRR - NOAA and Earth Observation Satellite, Australasian Coverage

The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and AVHRR/3 sensors have been carried on the US NOAA polar orbiting satellites since the 1980s. These data have been acquired via direct reception from the satellite by reception stations located in Australia. CSIRO has stitched together data received by different stations and agencies to compile a national high quality data set. The daylight satellite overpasses have been extracted from this data set for each day in the 30 year period commencing 1 April 1992. The data have been geolocated, and calibrated to produce imagery channels of solar reflectance and brightness temperature using community published methods. Satellite view and sun illumination angles for each pixel are provided, together with a preliminary cloud mask based on the CLAVR algorithm. The spatial resolution is ~1 km and temporal coverage is daily. The reprojected data set (in EPSG:4326, lon-lat) is available via the CSIRO EASI hub.

Simple

Identification info

Date (Creation)
2023-06-28
Date (Publication)
2024-05-15
Date (Revision)
2025-12-10
Edition
1.0

Publisher

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
+61 7 3365 9097

Author

CSIRO Environment
Clunies Ross Street, Black Mountain, 2601, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Black Mountain
Australian Capital Territory
2601
Australia

Principal investigator

CSIRO Environment - King, Edward ()
Clunies Ross Street, Black Mountain, 2601, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Black Mountain
Australian Capital Territory
2601
Australia

Co-author

CSIRO Environment - Dino, Aarond ()
Clunies Ross Street, Black Mountain, 2601, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Black Mountain
Australian Capital Territory
2601
Australia

Author

CSIRO Environment - King, Edward ()
Clunies Ross Street, Black Mountain, 2601, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Black Mountain
Australian Capital Territory
2601
Australia
Website
https://www.tern.org.au/

Purpose
The brightness temperature data are usable for sea and land surface temperature monitoring, while the reflectance imagery enable vegetation and surface cover detection and quantification. Cloud properties can also be deduced from these data.
Credit
We at TERN acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians throughout Australia, New Zealand and all nations. We honour their profound connections to land, water, biodiversity and culture and pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
Credit
This work was funded by the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), while compilation of the underlying raw data set has been supported by CSIRO and the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS). TERN and IMOS are Australian Government NCRIS enabled projects, and are supported by the use of TERN and IMOS infrastructure.
Status
On going

Point of contact

CSIRO Environment - King, Edward ()
Clunies Ross Street, Black Mountain, 2601, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Clunies Ross Street
Black Mountain
Australian Capital Territory
2601
Australia

Point of contact

CSIRO Environment
Clunies Ross Street, Black Mountain, 2601, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Clunies Ross Street
Black Mountain
Australian Capital Territory
2601
Australia

Spatial resolution

Angular sampling measure
0.01
Topic category
  • Environment
  • Imagery base maps earth cover

Extent

Description
Greater Australasian Region.
N
S
E
W


Temporal extent

Time period
1992-04-01
Maintenance and update frequency
Annually
GCMD Science Keywords
  • VEGETATION
  • SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE
  • LAND SURFACE TEMPERATURE
  • CLOUD TOP TEMPERATURE
  • NORMALIZED DIFFERENCE VEGETATION INDEX (NDVI)
  • CLOUD FREQUENCY
  • AGRICULTURAL LANDS
ANZSRC Fields of Research
  • Landscape ecology
  • Agricultural spatial analysis and modelling
  • Physical oceanography
  • Cloud physics
  • Ecological applications
TERN Platform Vocabulary
  • Earth Observation Satellite
  • NOAA-11
  • NOAA-14
  • NOAA-16
  • NOAA-18
  • NOAA-19
TERN Instrument Vocabulary
  • AVHRR3
  • AVHRR
TERN Parameter Vocabulary
  • toa bidirectional reflectance
  • Percent
  • toa brightness temperature
  • Kelvin
QUDT Units of Measure
  • Percent
  • Kelvin
GCMD Horizontal Resolution Ranges
  • 1 km - < 10 km or approximately .01 degree - < .09 degree
GCMD Temporal Resolution Ranges
  • Daily - < Weekly

Resource specific usage

Specific usage
Provides ~1&nbsp;km resolution daily coverage of top of atmosphere reflectance and brightness temperature for the greater Australasian region. The data are suitable for applications requiring moderate resolution (~1&nbsp;km) daily coverage, that are not sensitive to atmospheric correction.

Resource constraints

Use limitation
The Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license allows others to copy, distribute, display, and create derivative works provided that they credit the original source and any other nominated parties. Details are provided at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
File name
88x31.png
File description
CCBy Logo from creativecommons.org
File type
png
Linkage
https://w3id.org/tern/static/cc-by/88x31.png

Title
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
Alternate title
CC-BY
Edition
4.0
Website
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Access constraints
License
Use constraints
Other restrictions
Other constraints
TERN services are provided on an "as-is" and "as available" basis. Users use any TERN services at their discretion and risk. They will be solely responsible for any damage or loss whatsoever that results from such use including use of any data obtained through TERN and any analysis performed using the TERN infrastructure. <br />Web links to and from external, third party websites should not be construed as implying any relationships with and/or endorsement of the external site or its content by TERN. <br /><br />Please advise any work or publications that use this data via the online form at https://www.tern.org.au/research-publications/#reporting
Other constraints
Please cite this dataset as {Author} ({PublicationYear}). {Title}. {Version, as appropriate}. Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network. Dataset. {Identifier}.

Resource constraints

Classification
Unclassified
Environment description
The original data set is held in ASDA (Australian Satellite Data Archive) format by CSIRO. The processing codes have been developed in Python at CSIRO, building on CSIRO's CAPS (Common AVHRR Processing System) software and the <a href="https://github.com/pytroll/pygac">Pygac packages</a>. The bulk of the processing was undertaken at the NCI (National Computational Infrastructure) in Canberra.

Distribution Information

Distribution format

Distributor

Distributor

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
80 Meiers Road, Indooroopilly, Queensland, 4068, Australia
Indooroopilly
Queensland
4068
Australia
OnLine resource
Long-term Australian Daytime AVHRR Data

OnLine resource
long_term_australian_daytime_avhrr

Long-term Australian Daytime AVHRR

OnLine resource
Landscape Data Visualiser

OnLine resource
ro-crate-metadata.json

Data quality info

Hierarchy level
Dataset
Other
The underlying stitched High resolution picture transmission (HRPT) data set is the highest quality raw data available, with many artefacts arising from single-station reception having been eliminated (except at the start and end of the stitched super-passes). The geolocation accuracy is generally better than 1 pixel, while the calibration is at least nominal. The Heidinger et al. reflectance calibration is the most consistent up to data whole-of-time series set available. Missing lines are flagged in the data but extreme values within lines arising from interference in data transmission are not uniformly flagged.

Report

Result

Statement
This data is usable with moderate caution, but is expected to demonstrate the scope and capability of these data pending future reprocessings with enhanced QC.

Resource lineage

Statement
High resolution picture transmission (HRPT) data received in Australia by multiple agencies/institutions and stitched into continent-spanning super-overpasses by CSIRO. Processed to geophysical top-of-atmosphere parameters using geolocation code based on CSIRO's original CAPS software and calibration methods based on the original NOAA-recommended approach for brightness temperature and the Heidinger et al., 2010 method for reflectance (calibration as implemented in <a href="https://github.com/pytroll/pygac">GitHub</a>.
Hierarchy level
Dataset

Reference System Information

Reference system identifier
EPSG/EPSG:4326

Reference system type
Geodetic Geographic 2D

Metadata

Metadata identifier
urn:uuid/db451646-cfd3-4457-95ca-5d452d2683a0

Title
TERN GeoNetwork UUID

Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8

Point of contact

Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network
Building 1019, 80 Meiers Rd
Indooroopilly
QLD
4068
Australia
+61 7 3365 9097

Type of resource

Resource scope
Dataset
Metadata linkage
https://geonetwork.tern.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/db451646-cfd3-4457-95ca-5d452d2683a0

Point-of-truth metadata URL

Date info (Creation)
2023-06-28T00:00:00.000000+00:00
Date info (Revision)
2025-12-10T10:34:09.075451+00:00

Metadata standard

Title
ISO 19115-1:2014/AMD 1:2018 Geographic information - Metadata - Fundamentals
Edition
1

Metadata standard

Title
ISO/TS 19115-3:2016
Edition
1.0

Metadata standard

Title
ISO/TS 19157-2:2016
Edition
1.0
Title
Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-3:2016 and ISO 19157-2:2016
Date (published)
2021
Edition
1.0

Identifier

Code
10.5281/zenodo.5652221
Website
https://github.com/ternaustralia/TERN-ISO19115/releases/tag/v1.0

 
 

Overviews

Spatial extent

N
S
E
W


Keywords

ANZSRC Fields of Research
Agricultural spatial analysis and modelling Cloud physics Ecological applications Landscape ecology Physical oceanography
GCMD Science Keywords
AGRICULTURAL LANDS CLOUD FREQUENCY CLOUD TOP TEMPERATURE LAND SURFACE TEMPERATURE NORMALIZED DIFFERENCE VEGETATION INDEX (NDVI) SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE VEGETATION

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Associated resources

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