11th Conference on Satellite Meteorology and Oceanography

Wednesday, 17 October 2001
Intercalibration of Meteorological Satellite Imagers Using VIRS, ATSR-2, and MODIS
Louis Nguyen, NASA/LARC, Hampton, VA; and P. Minnis, J. K. Ayers, and D. R. Doelling
Poster PDF (55.0 kB)
Global retrievals of surface, cloud and radiative properties from satellite imager sensors require accurate calibration of the imager channels onboard geostationary (GEO) and low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites. A simple timely technique has been developed to routinely intercalibrate and normalize the imager channels. It matches collocated data with similar view, solar and relative azimuth angles. As a reference calibration source, this technique uses self-calibrating sensors from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Visible Infrared Radiometers (VIRS), the ERS-2 Along Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR-2) and the Terra Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). GOES-8, a common satellite, is then calibrated using VIRS. This calibration is then transferred to other GEO or LEO satellites. This paper discusses the absolute accuracies of the visible and infrared calibration. A table of visible calibration coefficients will be provided for GOES-8 thru GOES-10, Geostationary Meteorological Satellite (GMS-5), Meteosat-7, and NOAA-14.

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