Community Satellite Processing Package

  CSPP VIIRS Radiance Clusters (VRC) Software Version 1.0 Release

13 August 2025

The VIIRS Radiance Clusters (VRC) software is a new CSPP Package that ingests JPSS VIIRS and CrIS Sensor Data Records (SDRs) and produces Binary Universal Form for Data Representation (BUFR) product files containing CrIS radiances and collocated VIIRS radiance cluster statistics. The typical user for these products will be a Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) center that assimilates CrIS radiances.

The VIIRS Radiance Clusters software was developed by Likun Wang at NOAA/NESDIS/STAR.

This CSPP release provides VIIRS Radiance Clusters Software Version 1.0, adapted and tested for operation in a real-time direct broadcast (DB) environment. The software contains binary executable files and supporting static data files, as well as input and output files for verification of a successful installation.

Features of the CSPP Radiance Clusters Software Release Version 1.0:
  • Supports NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 satellites.
  • Inputs are CrIS and VIIRS Sensor Data Record (SDR) files in HDF5 format that are coincident in time.
  • Outputs are two BUFR files per CrIS granule: one with the full set of 2211 CrIS channels and one with a subset of 431 channels (both files contain the VIIRS radiance cluster statistics).
  • The CSPP VRC output BUFR files are formatted identically to the CrIS BUFR files created in the NOAA global processing system, with the exception that they do not contain VIIRS cloud product information (e.g., cloud top height).
  • Includes multi-core support for faster execution.
  • The software consists of 3 modules:
    • CrIS data extraction module,
    • VIIRS/CrIS collocation and VIIRS radiance cluster statistics module,
    • BUFR output module.
System Requirements

System requirements for the CSPP VRC v1.0 software are as follows:

  • Intel or AMD CPU with 64-bit instruction support
  • 8 GB RAM
  • Rocky Linux 8.10 64-bit Linux (or other compatible 64-bit Linux distribution)
  • 4 GB of disk space (plus space for your own DB data and CSPP VRC products)
  • Perl version 5

Using the CSPP Radiance Clusters Software on other Linux distributions

  • The CSPP VRC v1.0 software is supported on 64-bit Rocky Linux 8 (compatible with RHEL 8 and Alma Linux 8). The software may be installed and executed on other Linux operating systems via an Apptainer sandbox. Instructions are included in Section 4.0 of the Installation Guide.

The software, installation guide and test data are available at the CSPP Download site.


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