An exposition on the solar diffuser degradation non-uniformity effect for SNPP VIIRS and Terra/Aqua MODIS

The use of a specially manufactured solar diffuser (SD) is at the heart of the on-orbit calibration of the reflective solar bands (RSBs) for many important satellite sensors. This includes the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) onboard the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) satellite, and the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard the Terra and Aqua satellites. Within the current standard calibration procedure is an implicit assumption of an idealized degradation of SD in which its angular dependence remains the same functional form with the overall degradation level characterized by a single parameter, the SD degradation factor. This permits the measurement of the SD reflectance performance, measured by the SD stability monitor (SDSM) at a given outgoing angle with respect to the SD, to be used as a valid substitute for the SD reflectance performance toward the RSB direction that is at a different outgoing angle. Recent in-depth studies have uncovered evidence to contradict this assumption, and due to this difference in the outgoing angles between the RSBs and SDSM, the RSB calibration coefficients inherit growing bias. In this exposition, we will explicitly show the evolving angular dependence in SD degradation for SNPP VIIRS and Terra/Aqua MODIS. By examining the angular dependence of the available detector response within each calibration event we are able to build a historical trend clearly demonstrating evolving angular dependence. We refer to this phenomenon as the “SD degradation nonuniformity effect”. Our finding lays out a very basic mismatch between the use of the SD and the current official RSB calibration methodology that will be an important issue to be addressed.