Assessment of the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) Flight Model 5 (FM5) instrument performance and stability

The Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) scanning radiometer is designed to measure the solar radiation reflected by the Earth and thermal radiation emitted by the Earth. Four CERES instruments are supporting the EOS missions; two aboard the Terra spacecraft, launched in 1999 and two aboard the Aqua spacecraft, launched in 2002. A fifth instrument, Flight Model 5 (FM5), launched in October 2011 aboard the S-NPP satellite, began taking radiance measurements on January 27th, 2012. The CERES FM5 instrument uses three scanning thermistor bolometers to make broadband radiance measurements in the shortwave (0.3 – 5.0 micrometers), total (0.3 - <100 micrometers) and water vapor window (8 – 12 micrometer) regions. An internal calibration module (ICM) used for in-flight calibration is built into the CERES instrument package consisting of an anodized aluminum blackbody source for calibrating the total and window sensors, and a shortwave internal calibration source (SWICS) for the shortwave sensor. The ICM sources, along with a solar diffusor called the Mirror Attenuator Mosaic (MAM), are used to define shifts or drifts in the sensor response over the life of the mission. In addition, validation studies are conducted to assess the pointing accuracy of the instrument and understand any spectral changes that may occur with the sensors allowing for corrections to be made to the radiance calculations in later CERES data products. This paper summarizes the on-orbit behavior of the CERES FM5 instrument by outlining trends in the internal calibration data and discussing the various validation studies used to assess the performance and stability of the instrument.