National Dataset

Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR)

Theme 
Jurisdiction 
Commonwealth
Custodian 

The NOAA/AVHRR sensor series has been operating since the 1980s. It is the longest-running daily 1km imagery data set globally. Full resolution data is only available via direct broadcast from the spacecraft at the time of overpass. Multiple state and federal agencies have been acquiring the data in this manner with reception stations in Hobart, Melbourne, Perth, Alice Springs, Darwin and Townsville. Since the early 1990s CSIRO has been merging these separate local data sets to produce a stitched archive which makes use of the redundancy arising from overlap between reception stations to produce a higher quality and consistently formatted data set with national coverage.

These data underpin the IMOS sea surface temperature record and the TERN vegetation index time series for Australia. In addition they find numerous uses in studies of environmental thermodynamics, landcover dynamics, fire hotspot inventories, fire scar quantification and many other applications. As the Australian Landsat archive becomes more widely available, these data offer the prospect of extending a daily high resolution blended product for more than 10 years before MODIS.

The assembly of this data set continues within CSIRO today, thoug hit is likely to come to an end sometime this decade as the last of the AVHRR sensors has now been launched.
As raw data, these are unlikely to be cited directly. IMOS and TERN, and other users, will generate higher level products from these data that will be more useful in applications more likely to attract citations.

More information can be found:
http://www.eoc.csiro.au/tech_reps/2003/tr2003_04.pdf
http://www.bom.gov.au/australia/satellite/asda.shtml.

Output Products