Steven D. Miller

TL;DR: CloudSat as discussed by the authors is a satellite experiment designed to measure the vertical structure of clouds from space, and once launched, CloudSat will orbit in formation as part of a constellation of satellites (the A-Train) that includes NASA's Aqua and Aura satellites, a NASA-CNES lidar satellite (CALIPSO), and a CNES satellite carrying a polarimeter (PARASOL).

TL;DR: In this article, the authors outline the historical development of night-time optical sensors up to the current state-of-the-art sensors, highlight various applications of night light data, discuss the special challenges associated with remote sensing of night lights with a focus on the limitations of current sensors, and provide an outlook for the future of remote sensing.

TL;DR: In this article, a method for retrieving precipitation over the ocean using spaceborne W-band radar is introduced and applied to the CloudSat Cloud Profiling Radar, which is most applicable to stratiform-type precipitation.

TL;DR: The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite, which carries a new Day/Night Band (DNB) radiometer, offers the first quantitative measurements of nocturnal visible and near-infrared light.

TL;DR: The Black Marble nighttime lights product suite (VNP46) is available at 500m resolution since January 2012 with data from the VISible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day/Night Band (DNB) onboard the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Platform (SNPP) as discussed by the authors, which utilizes all high-quality, cloud-free, atmospheric-, terrain-, vegetation-, snow-, lunar-, and stray light-corrected radiances to estimate daily nighttime lights (NTL) and other intrinsic surface optical properties.