NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

Snapshot

Why it matters internationally

JPL is one of the world’s leading institutions in the remote-sensing branch of emissivity research. JEDI aims to create a unified land-surface emissivity Earth System Data Record — a long-term, consistent, calibrated emissivity dataset across multiple sensors and missions — while the LST&E Portal focuses on reconciliation, validation, metadata, and community use. In materials laboratories emissivity is often measured on individual samples; at JPL, emissivity is an Earth-system variable that must be retrieved, reconciled, and distributed at scale. Any serious map of emissivity research that excludes JPL would be incomplete, because it would omit the entire planetary and Earth-observation branch of the field.

Scope of activity

Relevant units

• JEDI — Joint Emissivity Database Initiative — unified land-surface emissivity Earth System Data Record.
• LST&E Portal — Land Surface Temperature & Emissivity Portal — reconciliation, validation, metadata, and community use of LST&E products.

Radiative properties measured / retrieved

Land-surface emissivity · land-surface temperature — as retrieved from satellite thermal-infrared data.

Capability envelope

• Wavelength: thermal infrared.
• Methodology: Earth-system emissivity retrieval, reconciliation, and long-term data records across multiple missions — MODIS, AIRS, ASTER, VIIRS — with cross-mission harmonization of LST&E products.

Signature infrastructure

• JEDI land-surface emissivity Earth System Data Record — a unified emissivity ESDR drawing on multiple sensors.
• LST&E Portal — reconciliation, validation, metadata, and community use of land-surface temperature and emissivity products.

Application domains

• Climate science
• Surface temperature retrieval
• Satellite calibration
• Thermal remote sensing at Earth-system scale

Why NASA JPL is a reference pole

At JPL, emissivity is not one quantity measured on one sample — it is a global, gridded, time-resolved field produced by reconciling data from multiple satellites. This makes JPL the reference institution for any discussion of emissivity at planetary scale: whenever the question is “what is the emissivity of a region of the Earth (or Mars) in this wavelength band, right now?”, the answer traces back through JEDI and LST&E infrastructure.

External sources

• Joint Emissivity Database Initiative (JEDI)