Validation of GOES-16 ABI reflective solar band calibration through reanalysis and comparison with field campaign data

Abstract

The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) is a critical instrument onboard GOES-16 which provides high quality Reflective Solar Bands (RSB) data though radiometric calibration using onboard solar diffuser. Intensive field campaign for post-launch validation of the ABI L1B spectral radiance observations was carried out during March-May, 2017 to ensure the SI traceability of ABI. In this paper, radiometric calibrations of the five RSBs of ABI are evaluated with the measurements by Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS-NG) onboard the high-altitude aircraft ER2. The ABI MESO data processed by the vendor with ray-matching to AVIRIS-NG during the field campaign was compared with the AVIRIS-NG measurements for radiometric bias evaluation. Furthermore, there were several implementations and updates in the solar calibration of ABI RSBs which resulted in different versions of detector gains and nonlinear calibration factors. These calibrations included the calibration by the operational ground processing system, by vendor and the calibration with updated nonlinear calibration factor table for striping mitigation and accounting for the integration time difference between solar calibration and Earth view. The North-South Scan (NSS) field campaign data of ABI were re-processed with these calibration coefficients to quantitatively evaluate the detector uniformity change. The detector uniformity difference are traced back to the difference in the implementation of the solar calibration.