A high-quality daily nighttime light (HDNTL)  dataset for global 600+ cities (2012–2024)

Pei, Zixuan; Zhu, Xiaolin; Hu, Yang; Chen, Jin; Tan, Xiaoyue

doi:10.5194/essd-17-5675-2025

Articles | Volume 17, issue 10

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-5675-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-5675-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 10

Data description article

|

28 Oct 2025

Data description article |

| 28 Oct 2025

A high-quality daily nighttime light (HDNTL) dataset for global 600+ cities (2012–2024)

Zixuan Pei, Xiaolin Zhu, Yang Hu, Jin Chen, and Xiaoyue Tan

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Month	HTML	PDF	XML	Total
May 2025	197	57	8	262
Jun 2025	117	37	7	161
Jul 2025	108	29	4	141
Aug 2025	218	29	0	247
Sep 2025	955	22	3	980
Oct 2025	363	71	5	439
Nov 2025	386	143	22	551
Dec 2025	406	180	12	598
Jan 2026	311	183	11	505
Feb 2026	191	158	17	366
Mar 2026	233	192	13	438
Apr 2026	336	261	40	637
May 2026	294	235	19	548
Jun 2026	0

Cumulative views and downloads (calculated since 07 May 2025)

Month	HTML	PDF	XML	Total
May 2025	197	57	8	262
Jun 2025	117	37	7	161
Jul 2025	108	29	4	141
Aug 2025	218	29	0	247
Sep 2025	955	22	3	980
Oct 2025	363	71	5	439
Nov 2025	386	143	22	551
Dec 2025	406	180	12	598
Jan 2026	311	183	11	505
Feb 2026	191	158	17	366
Mar 2026	233	192	13	438
Apr 2026	336	261	40	637
May 2026	294	235	19	548
Jun 2026	0

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Total article views: 5,873 (including HTML, PDF, and XML) Thereof 5,795 with geography defined and 78 with unknown origin.

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Short summary

Nighttime light (NTL) data aids urban planning and disaster monitoring. Our study introduces HDNTL, a daily NTL dataset for 653 major cities (population >1 M by 2025) from 2012–2024, enhancing NASA's VNP46A2 accuracy by correcting spatial mismatches, angular effects, and filling small data holes via spatiotemporal interpolation. Validated against high-resolution NTL datasets and ground-truth records, HDNTL enables precise monitoring of nighttime human activities.