Early On-Orbit Performance of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite Onboard the Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) Satellite

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) is one of the key environmental remote-sensing instruments onboard the Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership spacecraft, which was successfully launched on October 28, 2011 from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Following a series of spacecraft and sensor activation operations, the VIIRS nadir door was opened on November 21, 2011. The first VIIRS image acquired signifies a new generation of operational moderate resolution-imaging capabilities following the legacy of the advanced very high-resolution radiometer series on NOAA satellites and Terra and Aqua Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer for NASA's Earth Observing system. VIIRS provides significant enhancements to the operational environmental monitoring and numerical weather forecasting, with 22 imaging and radiometric bands covering wavelengths from 0.41 to 12.5 microns, providing the sensor data records for 23 environmental data records including aerosol, cloud properties, fire, albedo, snow and ice, vegetation, sea surface temperature, ocean color, and nigh-time visible-light-related applications. Preliminary results from the on-orbit verification in the postlaunch check-out and intensive calibration and validation have shown that VIIRS is performing well and producing high-quality images. This paper provides an overview of the onorbit performance of VIIRS, the calibration/validation (cal/val) activities and methodologies used. It presents an assessment of the sensor initial on-orbit calibration and performance based on the efforts from the VIIRS-SDR team. Known anomalies, issues, and future calibration efforts, including the long-term monitoring, and intercalibration are also discussed

A Non-Stationary 1981-2012 AVHRR NDVI(sub 3g) Time Series

The NDVI(sub 3g) time series is an improved 8-km normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data set produced from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) instruments that extends from 1981 to the present. The AVHRR instruments have flown or are flying on fourteen polar-orbiting meteorological satellites operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and are currently flying on two European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) polar-orbiting meteorological satellites, MetOp-A and MetOp-B. This long AVHRR record is comprised of data from two different sensors: the AVHRR/2 instrument that spans July 1981 to November 2000 and the AVHRR/3 instrument that continues these measurements from November 2000 to the present. The main difficulty in processing AVHRR NDVI data is to properly deal with limitations of the AVHRR instruments. Complicating among-instrument AVHRR inter-calibration of channels one and two is the dual gain introduced in late 2000 on the AVHRR/3 instruments for both these channels. We have processed NDVI data derived from the Sea-Viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) from 1997 to 2010 to overcome among-instrument AVHRR calibration difficulties. We use Bayesian methods with high quality well-calibrated SeaWiFS NDVI data for deriving AVHRR NDVI calibration parameters. Evaluation of the uncertainties of our resulting NDVI values gives an error of plus or minus 0.005 NDVI units for our 1981 to present data set that is independent of time within our AVHRR NDVI continuum and has resulted in a non-stationary climate data set

Workshop on Strategies for Calibration and Validation of Global Change Measurements

The Committee on Environment and Natural Resources (CENR) Task Force on Observations and Data Management hosted a Global Change Calibration/Validation Workshop on May 10-12, 1995, in Arlington, Virginia. This Workshop was convened by Robert Schiffer of NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., for the CENR Secretariat with a view toward assessing and documenting lessons learned in the calibration and validation of large-scale, long-term data sets in land, ocean, and atmospheric research programs. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)/Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) hosted the meeting on behalf of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS)/Working Group on Calibration/walidation, the Global Change Observing System (GCOS), and the U. S. CENR. A meeting of experts from the international scientific community was brought together to develop recommendations for calibration and validation of global change data sets taken from instrument series and across generations of instruments and technologies. Forty-nine scientists from nine countries participated. The U. S., Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Russia, and Kenya were represented

Overview of Intercalibration of Satellite Instruments

Intercalibration of satellite instruments is critical for detection and quantification of changes in the Earth’s environment, weather forecasting, understanding climate processes, and monitoring climate and land cover change. These applications use data from many satellites; for the data to be interoperable, the instruments must be cross-calibrated. To meet the stringent needs of such applications, instruments must provide reliable, accurate, and consistent measurements over time. Robust techniques are required to ensure that observations from different instruments can be normalized to a common scale that the community agrees on. The long-term reliability of this process needs to be sustained in accordance with established reference standards and best practices. Furthermore, establishing physical meaning to the information through robust Système International d’unités traceable calibration and validation (Cal/Val) is essential to fully understand the parameters under observation. The processes of calibration, correction, stabilitymonitoring, and quality assurance need to be underpinned and evidenced by comparison with “peer instruments” and, ideally, highly calibrated in-orbit reference instruments. Intercalibration between instruments is a central pillar of the Cal/Val strategies of many national and international satellite remote sensing organizations. Intercalibration techniques as outlined in this paper not only provide a practical means of identifying and correcting relative biases in radiometric calibration between instruments but also enable potential data gaps between measurement records in a critical time series to be bridged. Use of a robust set of internationally agreed upon and coordinated intercalibration techniques will lead to significant improvement in the consistency between satellite instruments and facilitate accurate monitoring of the Earth’s climate at uncertainty levels needed to detect and attribute the mechanisms of change. This paper summarizes the state-of-the-art of postlaunch radiometric calibration of remote sensing satellite instruments through intercalibration

Overview of Intercalibration of Satellite Instruments

Intercalibration of satellite instruments is critical for detection and quantification of changes in the Earth’s environment, weather forecasting, understanding climate processes, and monitoring climate and land cover change. These applications use data from many satellites; for the data to be interoperable, the instruments must be cross-calibrated. To meet the stringent needs of such applications, instruments must provide reliable, accurate, and consistent measurements over time. Robust techniques are required to ensure that observations from different instruments can be normalized to a common scale that the community agrees on. The long-term reliability of this process needs to be sustained in accordance with established reference standards and best practices. Furthermore, establishing physical meaning to the information through robust Système International d’unités traceable calibration and validation (Cal/Val) is essential to fully understand the parameters under observation. The processes of calibration, correction, stabilitymonitoring, and quality assurance need to be underpinned and evidenced by comparison with “peer instruments” and, ideally, highly calibrated in-orbit reference instruments. Intercalibration between instruments is a central pillar of the Cal/Val strategies of many national and international satellite remote sensing organizations. Intercalibration techniques as outlined in this paper not only provide a practical means of identifying and correcting relative biases in radiometric calibration between instruments but also enable potential data gaps between measurement records in a critical time series to be bridged. Use of a robust set of internationally agreed upon and coordinated intercalibration techniques will lead to significant improvement in the consistency between satellite instruments and facilitate accurate monitoring of the Earth’s climate at uncertainty levels needed to detect and attribute the mechanisms of change. This paper summarizes the state-of-the-art of postlaunch radiometric calibration of remote sensing satellite instruments through intercalibration

MODIS: Moderate-resolution imaging spectrometer. Earth observing system, volume 2B

The Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS), as presently conceived, is a system of two imaging spectroradiometer components designed for the widest possible applicability to research tasks that require long-term (5 to 10 years), low-resolution (52 channels between 0.4 and 12.0 micrometers) data sets. The system described is preliminary and subject to scientific and technological review and modification, and it is anticipated that both will occur prior to selection of a final system configuration; however, the basic concept outlined is likely to remain unchanged

Initial Stability Assessment of S-NPP VIIRS Reflective Solar Band Calibration Using Invariant Desert and Deep Convective Cloud Targets

The latest CERES FM-5 instrument launched onboard the S-NPP spacecraft will use the VIIRS visible radiances from the NASA Land Product Evaluation and Analysis Tool Elements (PEATE) product for retrieving the cloud properties associated with its TOA flux measurement. In order for CERES to provide climate quality TOA flux datasets, the retrieved cloud properties must be consistent throughout the record, which is dependent on the calibration stability of the VIIRS imager. This paper assesses the NASA calibration stability of the VIIRS reflective solar bands using the Libya-4 desert and deep convective clouds (DCC). The invariant targets are first evaluated for temporal natural variability. It is found for visible (VIS) bands that DCC targets have half of the variability of Libya-4. For the shortwave infrared (SWIR) bands, the desert has less variability. The brief VIIRS record and target variability inhibits high confidence in identifying any trends that are less than 0.6yr for most VIS bands, and 2.5yr for SWIR bands. None of the observed invariant target reflective solar band trends exceeded these trend thresholds. Initial assessment results show that the VIIRS data have been consistently calibrated and that the VIIRS instrument stability is similar to or better than the MODIS instrument

Retrieving Near-Global Aerosol Loading over Land and Ocean from AVHRR

The spaceborne AVHRR sensors have provided a data record approaching 40 years, which is a crucial asset for studying the long-term trends of aerosol properties on both a global and regional basis. However, due to the limitations on its channels and information content, aerosol optical depth (AOD) data from AVHRR over land are still largely lacking. In this paper, we describe a new physics-based algorithm to retrieve global aerosol properties over both land and ocean from AVHRR for the first time. The over-land algorithm is an extension of our SeaWiFSMODIS Deep Blue algorithm, while a simplified version of the Satellite Ocean Aerosol Retrieval (SOAR) algorithm is used over ocean. We compare the retrieved AVHRR AOD values with those from MODIS collection 6 aerosol products on a daily and seasonal basis, and find in general good agreement between the two. For the satellites with equatorial crossing times within two hours of solar noon, the spatial coverage of the AVHRR aerosol product is comparable to that of MODIS, except over very bright arid regions (such as the Sahara and deserts in the Arabian Peninsula), where the underlying surface reflectance at 630 nm reaches the critical surface reflectance. Based upon comparisons of the AVHRR AOD against the AERONET data, the preliminary results indicate that the expected error is around +/-(0.03+15%) over ocean and +/-(0.05+25%) over land for this first version of the AVHRR aerosol products. Consequently, these new AVHRR aerosol products can contribute important building blocks for constructing a consistent long-term data record for climate studies

NASA Sea Ice Validation Program for the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Special Sensor Microwave Imager

The history of the program is described along with the SSM/I sensor, including its calibration and geolocation correction procedures used by NASA, SSM/I data flow, and the NASA program to distribute polar gridded SSM/I radiances and sea ice concentrations (SIC) on CD-ROMs. Following a discussion of the NASA algorithm used to convert SSM/I radiances to SICs, results of 95 SSM/I-MSS Landsat IC comparisons for regions in both the Arctic and the Antarctic are presented. The Landsat comparisons show that the overall algorithm accuracy under winter conditions is 7 pct. on average with 4 pct. negative bias. Next, high resolution active and passive microwave image mosaics from coordinated NASA and Navy aircraft underflights over regions of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas in March 1988 were used to show that the algorithm multiyear IC accuracy is 11 pct. on average with a positive bias of 12 pct. Ice edge crossings of the Bering Sea by the NASA DC-8 aircraft were used to show that the SSM/I 15 pct. ice concentration contour corresponds best to the location of the initial bands at the ice edge. Finally, a summary of results and recommendations for improving the SIC retrievals from spaceborne radiometers are provided

User's Guide for ERB 7 Matrix. Volume 1: Experiment Description and Quality Control Report for Year 1

The Nimbus 7 ERB MATRIX Tape is a computer program in which radiances and irradiances are converted into fluxes which are used to compute the basic scientific output parameters, emitted flux, albedo, and net radiation. They are spatially averaged and presented as time averages over one-day, six-day, and monthly periods. MATRIX data for the period November 16, 1978 through October 31, 1979 are presented. Described are the Earth Radiation Budget experiment, the Science Quality Control Report, Items checked by the MATRIX Science Quality Control Program, and Science Quality Control Data Analysis Report. Additional material from the detailed scientific quality control of the tapes which may be very useful to a user of the MATRIX tapes is included. Known errors and data problems and some suggestions on how to use the data for further climatologic and atmospheric physics studies are also discussed