Performance of NOAA-20 VIIRS Solar Diffuser and Solar Diffuser Stability Monitor

Abstract

Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) radiometrically calibrates its reflective solar bands (RSBs) primarily through a sunlit onboard solar diffuser (SD). The sunlit SD provides a known radiance under the condition that the absolute product of the SD screen transmittance and the bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) along the SD-to-telescope direction is accurately known. The BRDF changes due to solar exposure. The change, referred to as the H-factor, is monitored by the onboard SD stability monitor (SDSM). The accuracy of the retrieved H-factor propagates to the retrieved F-factor which corrects the scene spectral radiance. High accuracy of the retrieved H-factor relies on high accuracies in the SDSM screen relative effective transmittance and the relative product of the SD screen effective transmittance and the BRDF at the mission start, and a high SDSM detector signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). This article briefly reviews the algorithms used for the NOAA-20 (N20) VIIRS RSB on-orbit radiometric calibration. Additionally, we show the performance of the N20 VIIRS SDSM, giving the SDSM detector SNRs and the SDSM detector gain temporal changes. We develop a model for the SNRs. The model shows that the decreased SNRs in time are due to the detector gain decreases. We also show the N20 VIIRS SD on-orbit performance, measured by the retrieved H-factor and the estimated standard deviation of its error. The H-factor for the telescope view is obtained from the H-factor for the SDSM view, multiplied by an H-factor angular dependence term. We use an innovative method to determine the angular dependence, using the dependence obtained for the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) VIIRS.