ASTER/TIR vicarious calibration activities in US and Japan validation sites for 14 years

Abstract

The ASTER instrument onboard the NASA’s Terra satellite launched in December 1999 has three subsystems divided by the spectral regions. ASTER thermal infrared (TIR) subsystem has five TIR bands with a spatial resolution of 90 m. Since March 2000 after the initial checkout period, many vicarious calibration (VC) experiments have been conducted for ASTER/TIR in lakes such as Lake Tahoe (NV/CA), Salton Sea (CA), and Lake Kasumigaura (Japan), and in dry lakes such as Railroad Valley (NV), Alkali Lake (NV), and Coyote Lake (CA). In the present paper, 307 VC matchup data obtained by three organizations were analyzed. Overall results show that a typical difference between the at-sensor radiance acquired by onboard calibration (OBC) and that predicted by VC is about 0.5 to 1 K in the water sites and about 1 to 2 K in the land sites. The results of the responsivity analysis indicate that VC is well tracking the responsivity changes measured by OBC, though the recent discrepancy at band 10 should be investigated with more VC results. The results of the offset analysis indicate that the short term calibration (STC) which is performed at a blackbody temperature of 270 K before every Earth observation has worked normally. It is therefore concluded that the ASTER/TIR instrument has been keeping the designed accuracy (1 K for the temperature range of 270 to 340 K) since the launch.