Performance of NOAA-20 CrIS Sensor Data Record

The Joint Polar Satellite System-1 (JPSS-1) was successfully launched on November 18, 2017 and renamed NOAA-20 after reaching polar orbit. With the same design as Suomi NPP CrIS, NOAA-20 CrIS provides global hyperspectral infrared observations twice daily for profiling atmospheric temperature and water vapor, critically needed information for improving weather forecast accuracy out to seven days. CrIS also supplies information used to retrieve greenhouse gases, land surface and cloud properties. CrIS measures infrared spectra in three spectral bands: the long-wave IR (LWIR) band from 650 to 1095 cm-1, mid-wave IR (MWIR) band from 1210 to 1750 cm-1 and short-wave IR (SWIR) band from 2155 to 2550 cm-1. Normal spectral resolution (NSR) and full spectral resolution (FSR) operational modes provide a total of 1305 and 2211 radiance channels, respectively. The FSR SDR has more channels in mid-wave and short-wave bands to improve the critical information about atmospheric water vapor and trace gases.

As a key instrument to provide atmospheric information for the global NWP models and to improve the medium-range forecasts, NOAA-20 Sensor Data Record (SDR) products are continually improved and meet the requirements and calibration maturity milestones. CrIS SDR met beta maturity on January 17, 2018, provisional maturity on February 16, 2018, and is expected to meet the validated maturity on August 16, 2018. In this study, the NOAA-20 CrIS overall performance in spectral, radiometric, geometric calibrations and noise performance will be presented. Major findings are listed below: 1) On-orbit NEdN: all FOVs and bands within the specification (except for MW FOV9), comparable well to S-NPP; 2) Radiometric uncertainty: radiometric field of view (FOV) to FOV consistency for LW and MW bands are within 0.1 K, and the radiometric difference between S-NPP and NOAA-20 are within 0.1 K; 3) Spectral uncertainty: spectral offsets for relative and absolute for all three bands are all within ±1ppm; 4) Geolocation uncertainty: in-track and cross-track geolocation accuracy are within 300 meters error for all FORs using VIIRS as a reference.