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Night Lights by Region vs a Year Earlier
Night-time light from space, latest month, change from the same month a year earlier, %
Plays the chart through its history. Pauses are where a new leader takes first place.
Source: NASA Black Marble VNP46A3 (LAADS DAAC), monthly moonlight- and atmosphere-corrected night-time radiance from VIIRS on Suomi NPP. Palanor calculation: the area-weighted mean over each place's land, built by NASA from clear, snow-free nights, with pixels that had none filled with their latest good value; only light at or above 2 nW/cm²/sr counts, which leaves out a faint background glow in recent years. Boundaries: Natural Earth. A region's reading is the land-weighted mean of its countries with reliable coverage.
How much brighter or darker each region was at night than a year earlier, from NASA's Black Marble satellite record.
What this chart reads·11 series
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- Night Lights: World, Change vs Year Earlier (%)as “World”latest 2026-09-01
- Night Lights: Africa, Change vs Year Earlier (%)as “Africa”latest 2026-09-01
- Night Lights: Asia, Change vs Year Earlier (%)as “Asia”latest 2026-09-01
- Night Lights: North America, Change vs Year Earlier (%)as “North America”latest 2026-09-01
- Night Lights: South America, Change vs Year Earlier (%)as “South America”latest 2026-09-01
- Night Lights: Oceania, Change vs Year Earlier (%)as “Oceania”latest 2026-09-01
- Night Lights: Latin America & Caribbean, Change vs Year Earlier (%)as “Latin America & Caribbean”latest 2026-09-01
- Night Lights: Asia-Pacific, Change vs Year Earlier (%)as “Asia-Pacific”latest 2026-09-01
- Night Lights: Middle East & North Africa, Change vs Year Earlier (%)as “Middle East & North Africa”latest 2026-09-01
- Night Lights: Sub-Saharan Africa, Change vs Year Earlier (%)as “Sub-Saharan Africa”latest 2026-09-01
- Night Lights: European Union, Change vs Year Earlier (%)as “European Union”latest 2026-09-01
Sources·11 sources
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Night Lights: World, Change vs Year Earlier (%). Source: NASA Black Marble VNP46A3, collection 2 (VIIRS/NPP Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Monthly L3 Global 15 arc-second, doi:10.5067/VIIRS/VNP46A3.002), from NASA's LAADS DAAC. NASA Earth science data have no restrictions on use or redistribution (CC0). Boundaries: Natural Earth 10m (public domain). Palanor calculation; NASA does not endorse it. Refreshed from a GitHub Actions job that reads only the radiance, quality and land layers and stores no imagery.
Night Lights: Africa, Change vs Year Earlier (%). Source: NASA Black Marble VNP46A3, collection 2 (VIIRS/NPP Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Monthly L3 Global 15 arc-second, doi:10.5067/VIIRS/VNP46A3.002), from NASA's LAADS DAAC. NASA Earth science data have no restrictions on use or redistribution (CC0). Boundaries: Natural Earth 10m (public domain). Palanor calculation; NASA does not endorse it. Refreshed from a GitHub Actions job that reads only the radiance, quality and land layers and stores no imagery.
Night Lights: Asia, Change vs Year Earlier (%). Source: NASA Black Marble VNP46A3, collection 2 (VIIRS/NPP Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Monthly L3 Global 15 arc-second, doi:10.5067/VIIRS/VNP46A3.002), from NASA's LAADS DAAC. NASA Earth science data have no restrictions on use or redistribution (CC0). Boundaries: Natural Earth 10m (public domain). Palanor calculation; NASA does not endorse it. Refreshed from a GitHub Actions job that reads only the radiance, quality and land layers and stores no imagery.
Night Lights: North America, Change vs Year Earlier (%). Source: NASA Black Marble VNP46A3, collection 2 (VIIRS/NPP Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Monthly L3 Global 15 arc-second, doi:10.5067/VIIRS/VNP46A3.002), from NASA's LAADS DAAC. NASA Earth science data have no restrictions on use or redistribution (CC0). Boundaries: Natural Earth 10m (public domain). Palanor calculation; NASA does not endorse it. Refreshed from a GitHub Actions job that reads only the radiance, quality and land layers and stores no imagery.
Night Lights: South America, Change vs Year Earlier (%). Source: NASA Black Marble VNP46A3, collection 2 (VIIRS/NPP Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Monthly L3 Global 15 arc-second, doi:10.5067/VIIRS/VNP46A3.002), from NASA's LAADS DAAC. NASA Earth science data have no restrictions on use or redistribution (CC0). Boundaries: Natural Earth 10m (public domain). Palanor calculation; NASA does not endorse it. Refreshed from a GitHub Actions job that reads only the radiance, quality and land layers and stores no imagery.
Night Lights: Oceania, Change vs Year Earlier (%). Source: NASA Black Marble VNP46A3, collection 2 (VIIRS/NPP Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Monthly L3 Global 15 arc-second, doi:10.5067/VIIRS/VNP46A3.002), from NASA's LAADS DAAC. NASA Earth science data have no restrictions on use or redistribution (CC0). Boundaries: Natural Earth 10m (public domain). Palanor calculation; NASA does not endorse it. Refreshed from a GitHub Actions job that reads only the radiance, quality and land layers and stores no imagery.
Night Lights: Latin America & Caribbean, Change vs Year Earlier (%). Source: NASA Black Marble VNP46A3, collection 2 (VIIRS/NPP Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Monthly L3 Global 15 arc-second, doi:10.5067/VIIRS/VNP46A3.002), from NASA's LAADS DAAC. NASA Earth science data have no restrictions on use or redistribution (CC0). Boundaries: Natural Earth 10m (public domain). Palanor calculation; NASA does not endorse it. Refreshed from a GitHub Actions job that reads only the radiance, quality and land layers and stores no imagery.
Night Lights: Asia-Pacific, Change vs Year Earlier (%). Source: NASA Black Marble VNP46A3, collection 2 (VIIRS/NPP Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Monthly L3 Global 15 arc-second, doi:10.5067/VIIRS/VNP46A3.002), from NASA's LAADS DAAC. NASA Earth science data have no restrictions on use or redistribution (CC0). Boundaries: Natural Earth 10m (public domain). Palanor calculation; NASA does not endorse it. Refreshed from a GitHub Actions job that reads only the radiance, quality and land layers and stores no imagery.
Night Lights: Middle East & North Africa, Change vs Year Earlier (%). Source: NASA Black Marble VNP46A3, collection 2 (VIIRS/NPP Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Monthly L3 Global 15 arc-second, doi:10.5067/VIIRS/VNP46A3.002), from NASA's LAADS DAAC. NASA Earth science data have no restrictions on use or redistribution (CC0). Boundaries: Natural Earth 10m (public domain). Palanor calculation; NASA does not endorse it. Refreshed from a GitHub Actions job that reads only the radiance, quality and land layers and stores no imagery.
Night Lights: Sub-Saharan Africa, Change vs Year Earlier (%). Source: NASA Black Marble VNP46A3, collection 2 (VIIRS/NPP Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Monthly L3 Global 15 arc-second, doi:10.5067/VIIRS/VNP46A3.002), from NASA's LAADS DAAC. NASA Earth science data have no restrictions on use or redistribution (CC0). Boundaries: Natural Earth 10m (public domain). Palanor calculation; NASA does not endorse it. Refreshed from a GitHub Actions job that reads only the radiance, quality and land layers and stores no imagery.
Night Lights: European Union, Change vs Year Earlier (%). Source: NASA Black Marble VNP46A3, collection 2 (VIIRS/NPP Lunar BRDF-Adjusted Nighttime Lights Monthly L3 Global 15 arc-second, doi:10.5067/VIIRS/VNP46A3.002), from NASA's LAADS DAAC. NASA Earth science data have no restrictions on use or redistribution (CC0). Boundaries: Natural Earth 10m (public domain). Palanor calculation; NASA does not endorse it. Refreshed from a GitHub Actions job that reads only the radiance, quality and land layers and stores no imagery.
Charts are drawn from Palanor's signal library and recomputed from source data on every view. Transformations (changes, indexing, year-on-year rates) are Palanor's.