A temporally consistent global 500 m-resolution monthly VIIRS-like nighttime light dataset (1992–2024)

Abstract

Nighttime light (NTL) data serve as critical indicators of human activities and have been widely applied in urbanization monitoring and socioeconomic analyses. The two most widely used global NTL datasets, derived from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (NPP-VIIRS) aboard the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite, differ substantially in spatial resolution and temporal coverage, which hinders their direct integration into a consistent long-term dataset. Previous studies have explored the construction of annual or aggregated NTL data, but these methods often smooth out short-term fluctuations and seasonal variations. Monthly NTL, on the other hand, can provide a more detailed representation of temporal variations. However, the challenge with monthly data lies in maintaining consistent spatial resolution while capturing high-frequency temporal variations tied to economic cycles and seasonal trends, with data gaps persisting, further complicating the generation of continuous, high-resolution monthly NTL datasets. To overcome these challenges, we propose a super-resolution network for DMSP reconstruction, with dedicated pre- and post-processing to generate long-term monthly VIIRS-like NTL products (MVNL). Leveraging multi-modal observations, monthly VIIRS-like products are reconstructed by translating calibrated DMSP data from 1992 to 2013, with 2012 and 2013 serving as the overlapping years between the DMSP and NPP-VIIRS datasets. In particular, the 2013 annual data were used for model training and cross-sensor mapping, and the 2012 monthly NPP-VIIRS data were used as an independent validation benchmark. To construct the long-term VIIRS-like time series, we additionally gap-filled missing observations in the monthly NPP-VIIRS data for 2012–2024 and performed temporal correction to the reconstructed 1992–2012 NTL using the monthly NPP-VIIRS data from 2012 to 2013. Compared with the VIIRS NTL of Earth Observation Group (EOG), the extended dataset shows substantial agreement during the overlapping months in 2012, with a mean R2 of 0.65 and RMSE of 14.27 at the pixel scale and an even higher mean R2 of 0.96 at the city scale, underscoring the reliability of the reconstructed dataset for city-level applications. The 2012 annual composite derived from MVNL shows strong agreement with the EOG product, with R2 values of 0.72 at the pixel scale and 0.98 at the city scale. Moreover, city-level evaluation against radiance-calibrated DMSP products further verifies the reconstruction accuracy, with an R2 exceeding 0.94. Compared with existing NTL datasets, MVNL achieves substantial improvements in resolution, spatial calibration accuracy, and temporal continuity, establishing a continuous and trustworthy data resource. The extended monthly VIIRS-like NTL dataset for 1992–2024 is freely available online at https://doi.org/10.25442/hku.31321315.v2 (Cheng et al., 2026a).