Benefits and limitations
Benefits:
- Provides information on cloud phase, optical thickness and the green vegetation fraction
- Good color contrast between
- water clouds/fog and snow
- land and sea
- vegetated and non-vegetated area
- ice and water clouds
- cloud and (snow-free) land
- The colors are (relatively) close to the depicted features' natural colors, which makes these images convenient for the public.
Limitations:
- Snow and thick ice clouds have similar colors.
- Does not provide cloud analysis as complex as AVHRR Day Microphysics RGB images (e.g. the cloud top temperature information is missing).
Very thin cirrus clouds are hard or impossible to see, which can be a benefit or limitation depending on the image's application.