Using the moon to evaluate the radiometric calibration performance of S-NPP VIIRS thermal emissive bands

Zhipeng Wang; Xiaoxiong Xiong; Boryana V. Efremova; Hongda Chen

doi:10.1117/12.2062210

26 September 2014 Using the Moon to evaluate the radiometric calibration performance of S-NPP VIIRS thermal emissive bands

Zhipeng Wang, Xiaoxiong Xiong, Boryana V. Efremova, Hongda Chen

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 9218, Earth Observing Systems XIX; 92181W (2014) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2062210
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2014, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

The Suomi-NPP VIIRS thermal emissive bands (TEB) are radiometrically calibrated on-orbit with reference to a blackbody (BB) operated at a nominal temperature of approximately 292.5 K. The quality of the calibration can be evaluated at other temperature ranges using independent thermal sources. The thermal properties of the lunar surface are extremely stable over time, making it a feasible target for the TEB calibration stability assessment for the space-borne sensors with regular lunar observations. VIIRS is scheduled to view the Moon on a nearly monthly basis at approximately the same phase angle since January 2012, before the cryo-cooler door was open and TEB started to collect data. In this paper, the brightness temperatures (BT) of the lunar surface retrieved using the calibration coefficients derived from the BB calibration are trended for VIIRS TEB to examine the calibration stability. The lunar surface temperature varies greatly with location and also oscillates seasonally with the solar illumination geometry. Radiance from many lunar locations saturates TEB detectors. Therefore, the trending must base on the regions of the Moon that do not saturate the detectors at any lunar observation event and thus their BT can be consistently retrieved. To achieve that, a temporally dynamic spatial mask is built for each detector to clip the locations of the Moon that may saturate the detector at any lunar event. Results show the radiometric calibration of all TEB detectors has been stable within 1 K range since being functional.

Citation Download Citation

Zhipeng Wang, Xiaoxiong Xiong, Boryana V. Efremova, and Hongda Chen "Using the Moon to evaluate the radiometric calibration performance of S-NPP VIIRS thermal emissive bands", Proc. SPIE 9218, Earth Observing Systems XIX, 92181W (26 September 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2062210

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