Date of Image:

8/9/2021, 8/31/2021

Date of Next Image:

None Expected

Summary:

These Black Mable High-Definition (BMHD) images were created by the USRA/NASA Black Marble Science team, with directed funding the NASA-Google Partnership program. The images map the widespread impact of the recent tropical storm Ida in electric grids within the neighborhoods of New Orleans, LA. The baseline image (before the storm) was from August 9th 2021 – a cloud-free moon-free night and the after image was from August 31th – day after the storm landfall in the Gulf of Mexico. This comparison between the two images is meant as a visual assessment of outage impacts from the storm to aid various partners who are working to deliver emergency aids to local communities. Power outage maps like these help disaster response efforts in the short-term as well as long-term monitoring during the crucial stages of disaster recovery.

Suggested Use:

NOTE: Black Marble HD images are downscaled from NASA’s Black Marble nighttime lights product (VNP46), and as such are a “modelled” or “best guess” estimate of how lights are distributed at a 30m resolution. These images should be used for visualization purposes, not for quantitative analysis.

The image is in inferno color scale. Yellow represents presence of more light; dark blue less lights.

Satellite/Sensor:

The primary data source, NASA’s Black Marble nighttime lights product suite (VNP46), utilized to generate this product is derived from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day/Night Band (DNB) onboard the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Platform (SNPP) along with high resolution base layers - Landsat derived normalized index products (NDVI and NDWI) and OpenStreetMap (OSM) derived road layer

Resolution:

Scaled resolution of 30 meters

Credits:

USRA/NASA Black Marble Science team

Please cite the following two references when using this data:

• Román MO, Stokes EC, Shrestha R, Wang Z, Schultz L, Carlo EA, Sun Q, Bell J, Molthan A, Kalb V, Ji C. Satellite-based assessment of electricity restoration efforts in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. PloS one. 2019 Jun 28;14(6):e0218883.

• Román MO, Wang Z, Sun Q, Kalb V, Miller SD, Molthan A, Schultz L, Bell J, Stokes EC, Pandey B, Seto KC. NASA's Black Marble nighttime lights product suite. Remote Sensing of Environment. 2018 Jun 1;210:113-43.

Point of Contact:

Ranjay Shrestha

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

E-mail: ranjay.m.shrestha@nasa.gov

Additional Links:

• NASA’s Black Marble Product Suite

• Román, M.O. et al. (2019) Satellite-based assessment of electricity restoration efforts in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. PLoS One, 14 (6).

• Román, M.O. et al. (2018) NASA’s Black Marble nighttime lights product suite. Remote Sensing of Environment. 210, 113–143.