Reflective solar bands calibration improvements and look up tables for SNPP VIIRS operational mission-long SDR reprocessing

Abstract

The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) has been on orbit for more than five years. Through independent efforts by the NOAA Ocean Color (OC) Team, the radiometric calibration of reflective solar bands (RSBs) recently has reached a mature stage. Numerous improvements have been made in the standard RSB calibration methodology for the sensor data records (SDR), which is the starting point for the higher-level environmental data records (EDR) and science products. These improvements have helped the EDR ocean color products that demand stringent accuracy to reach maturity. The success of the OC EDR performance has further led to the institutional decision to use the calibration results generated by the OC Team, in the form of the lookup-tables (LUTs), as an official input for the operational SDR reprocessing, which are to be the official release to all users. The OC LUTs delivered for the operational SDR reprocessing is the latest update containing further improvements over the current LUTs used for the OC reprocessing and forward processing. This presentation will address the following topics: the inadequacies in the current operational forward SDR generated by the Interface Data Processing Segment (IDPS), the RSB calibration improvements made by the NOAA OC Team, the success of the RSB SDR reprocessing for ocean color EDR using the improved RSB LUTs, and finally, the use of the OC LUTs as the official LUTs for VIIRS RSB SDR operational reprocessing.