ABI's Unique Calibration and Validation Capabilities

Accurate calibration of weather data is becoming even more important as the use of weather data is expanded to more than just short term forecasts. Many techniques have been developed to improve the calibration of existing meteorological satellite instruments through observation of vicarious calibration scenes such as deserts, deep convective clouds, and the moon. However, the significant increase in the number of detector elements and the field of view of the next generation geostationary imagers means new challenges.

The ABI-class imager was designed to deliver unparalleled calibration. Not only does it have both reflective and emissive on-board targets, its scan control flexibility supports all of the traditional vicarious calibration approaches and provides the opportunity for brand new approaches. Even though ABI's north-south field-of-view is more than 60x that of the current generation GOES imager and has nearly 500x the number of detector elements, it can easily be calibrated using the same vicarious calibration sources. It also offers the unique ability to collect calibration data in parallel with routine weather image collections instead of interrupting these collections, which should greatly increase the opportunities for collecting calibration data. In addition, coordinated collections with other satellites and/or airborne sensors will be much simpler to synchronize and more simultaneous collections can be obtained. This capability is currently in use on Japan's Himawari-8, will soon be in use by NOAA/NASA's GOES-R and South Korea's GEO-KOMPSAT-2A, and would provide the same capabilities for Canada's proposed Polar Communication and Weather (PCW) mission.

This presentation will discuss the ABI-class imager design features associated with calibration and explore the many unique calibration opportunities they make possible.