Abstract

The S-NPP Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument is designed based on MODIS heritage and uses a similar on-board calibrating source - a V-grooved blackbody for the Thermal Emissive Bands (TEBs). Except for the 10.7 μm band, the central wavelengths of the rest of the VIIRS TEBs match well with MODIS. To ensure the continuity and consistency of data records between VIIRS and MODIS TEBs, it is important to assess any systematic differences between the two instruments for scenes with temperatures significantly lower than blackbody operating temperatures at ~290 K. In previous studies, the MODIS Calibration and Characterization Support Team (MCST) at NASA/GSFC uses recurrent observations of Dome C, Antarctica by both Terra and Aqua MODIS over the mission lifetime to track their calibration stability and consistency. Near-surface temperature measurements from an Automatic Weather Station (AWS) provide a proxy reference useful for tracking the stability and determining the relative bias between the two MODIS instruments. In this study, the same approach is applied to VIIRS TEBs and the results are compared with those from the matched MODIS TEBs. The results of this study provide a quantitative assessment for VIIRS TEBs performance over the first three years of the mission.

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