An extended AVHRR 8‐km NDVI dataset compatible with MODIS and SPOT vegetation NDVI data

TLDR

The dataset was created by processing AVHRR 4‑km data into 8‑km NDVI composites, applying volcanic aerosol corrections, empirical mode decomposition for solar‑zenith‑angle normalization, incorporating NOAA‑9, ‑16, and ‑17 data, and performing post‑processing to fix scan‑line, navigation, and edge‑of‑orbit artifacts, yielding a dynamic range comparable to MODIS. The resulting product spans July 1981–December 2004 for all continents except Antarctica and provides a bimonthly global NDVI dataset and a 10‑day Africa‑only dataset. All data are freely available from the University of Maryland Global Land Cover Facility (http://glcf.umiacs.umd.edu/data/gimms/).

Abstract

Daily daytime Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) 4‐km global area coverage data have been processed to produce a Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) 8‐km equal‐area dataset from July 1981 through December 2004 for all continents except Antarctica. New features of this dataset include bimonthly composites, NOAA‐9 descending node data from August 1994 to January 1995, volcanic stratospheric aerosol correction for 1982–1984 and 1991–1993, NDVI normalization using empirical mode decomposition/reconstruction to minimize varying solar zenith angle effects introduced by orbital drift, inclusion of data from NOAA‐16 for 2000–2003 and NOAA‐17 for 2003–2004, and a similar dynamic range with the MODIS NDVI. Two NDVI compositing intervals have been produced: a bimonthly global dataset and a 10‐day Africa‐only dataset. Post‐processing review corrected the majority of dropped scan lines, navigation errors, data drop outs, edge‐of‐orbit composite discontinuities, and other artefacts in the composite NDVI data. All data are available from the University of Maryland Global Land Cover Facility (http://glcf.umiacs.umd.edu/data/gimms/).