VIIRS Reflective Solar Band Radiometric and Stability Evaluation Using Deep Convective Clouds

This work takes advantage of the stable distribution of deep convective cloud (DCC) reflectance measurements to assess the calibration stability and detector difference in Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) reflective bands. VIIRS Sensor Data Records (SDRs) from February 2012 to June 2015 are utilized to analyze the long-term trending, detector difference, and half angle mirror (HAM) side difference. VIIRS has two thermal emissive bands with coverage crossing 11 μm for DCC pixel identification. The comparison of the results of these two processing bands is one of the indicators of analysis reliability. The long-term stability analysis shows downward trends (up to approximately 0.4% per year) for the visible and near-infrared bands and upward trends (up to 0.5% per year) for the shortand midwave infrared bands. The detector difference for each band is calculated as the difference relative to the average reflectance over all detectors. Except for the slightly greater than 1% difference in the two bands at 1610 nm, the detector difference is less than 1% for other solar reflective bands. The detector differences show increasing trends for some short-wave bands with center wavelengths from 400 to 600 nm and remain unchanged for the bands with longer center wavelengths. The HAM side difference is insignificant and stable. Those short-wave bands from 400 to 600 nm also have relatively larger HAM side difference, up to 0.25%. Comparing the striped images from SDR and the smooth images after the correction validates the analyses of detector difference and HAM side difference. These analyses are very helpful for VIIRS calibration improvement and thus enhance product quality.