GOES-17 ABI Anomaly Recovery: Predictive Calibration

An anomaly with the cooling system on-board GOES-17’s Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) prevents the instrument’s Focal Plane Modules (FPMs) from maintaining a constant, optimal temperature. The result is that for much of the year the FPMs and detectors warm and cool throughout the day, which in turn changes their response to incoming radiance and degrades the imagery. Several mitigation strategies have been implemented to reduce the degradation of L1b products, all of which work with the baseline calibration algorithms currently in place on the GOES-R Ground System. In an effort to further improve the L1b product quality, the ABI vendor designed a modified calibration algorithm that predicts metrics forward in time to account for the drifting FPM temperatures. These projected metrics help mitigate the effects of the rising and falling detector temperatures. The updated algorithm was deployed to Operations on July 25, 2019. Ahead of the deployment, the various GOES-R science teams tuned the various thresholds and parameters to ensure optimal performance. The result has been a noticeable improvement to the imagery and a reduction in the amount of time where imagery is degraded. This talk will highlight the changes to the calibration equation, contrasting it against the baseline version, and present results of the improvement in the operational L1b products.