87th AMS Annual Meeting

Wednesday, 17 January 2007
Aerosol Measurements from the VIIRS Instrument During NPOESS
217D (Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center)
Eric Shettle, NRL, Washington, DC; and R. Halthore, E. Vermote, and J. M. Jackson
The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) is being developed to replace the current NOAA Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite (POES) and the DoD Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) systems. The instruments generally will represent significant improvements over the current operational sensors. For example, the Visible-IR Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) with 22 channels will be replacing the 5-channel Advanced Very High Resolution (AVHRR) on the POES system and the 3-channel Operational Line Scanner (OLS) on the DMSP system. Measurements of the atmospheric aerosols from NPOESS will come from the VIIRS instrument. VIIRS has 22 spectral bands including 16 radiometric bands plus 5 imaging bands and a day-night band. The aerosol related Environmental Data Records (EDRs) will be derived primarily from the radiometric channels covering the visible through the short-wave infrared spectral regions (412 to 2250 nm). The primary aerosol products will be the aerosol optical thickness, the aerosol particle size parameter, and the identification of suspended matter. These aerosol products and their derivation will be described.

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