Validation of the onboard radiometric calibration of the GOES I-M visible channel by reflectance-based vicarious methods

The current generation of the Geostationary Operations Environmental Satellite (GOES) platform employs a total of 5 sensors to monitor and record atmospheric conditions used in predictions of upcoming weather events. Included in this package is a 5-band imager that, from the 36,000-km geosynchronous orbit inhabited by GOES platform, enables multiple fixed full-disc surface images of the earth during the course of a 24-hour day. There is currently no on-board radiometric calibration for the visible bands of the imager and radiometric calibration relies on vicarious approaches. The Remote Sensing Group (RSG) at the University of Arizona uses a vicarious approach that relies on ground-based measurements to determine the radiometric calibration for multiple sun-synchronous and airborne visible and near-infrared sensors. The current work extends the approach to the GOES I-M series of sensor. The paper presents the methods and results of the reflectance-based method applied to the 1-km visible channel of GOES-11using large North American high-desert test sites. Modifications to the RSG's methods to take into account the location of the test sites at large zenith angles within the full-disk GOES image. The work provides an opportunity to evaluate uncertainties of the spectral BRF of the test sites at large view angles and resulting importance to the accurate radiometric calibration of a sensor. In addition, the impact of increased path length caused by the large view angle is evaluated with an emphasis on the increased effect of the atmospheric characterization.