The Calibration and Intercalibration of Sea-Going Infrared Radiometer Systems Using a Low Cost Blackbody Cavity

Abstract There are many infrared radiometer systems available for the measurement of in situ sea surface skin temperature (SSST). Unfortunately, the marine environment is extremely hostile to optical components, and to ensure the accuracy of SSST measurements, an absolute calibration of instrumentation using an independent calibration reference is required both before and after any sea deployment. During extended deployments it is prudent to have additional regular calibration data to monitor instrument performance characteristics. This paper presents a design for an ambient temperature (278–325 K), wide aperture (100 mm), reference blackbody unit that may be used to calibrate a variety of sea-going infrared radiometer systems both in the laboratory and in the field. The blackbody consists of a spun copper cavity coated with well-characterized high emissivity paint (Mankiewicz Nextel Velvet Coating 811-21) immersed in a water bath that is continuously mixed using a strong water pump. The radiant temperatu...

[1]  William J. Emery,et al.  The Multi-Channel Infrared Sea Truth Radiometric Calibrator (MISTRC) , 1997 .

[2]  Joel B. Fowler,et al.  A Third Generation Water Bath Based Blackbody Source , 1995, Journal of research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

[3]  Philip I. Richardson.  Radiometric versus thermometric calibration of IR test systems: which is best? , 1991, Defense, Security, and Sensing.

[4]  John Turner,et al.  An Evaluation of a Self-Calibrating Infrared Radiometer for Measuring Sea Surface Temperature , 1995 .

[5]  William J. Emery,et al.  Comparison of satellite‐derived sea surface temperatures with in situ skin measurements , 1987 .

[6]  L. J. Cox,et al.  Infrared reflection properties of five types of black coating for radiometric detectors , 1985 .

[7]  M. Pinar Mengüç,et al.  Thermal Radiation Heat Transfer , 2020 .

[8]  William J. Emery,et al.  On the bulk‐skin temperature difference and its impact on satellite remote sensing of sea surface temperature , 1990 .

[9]  Paul A. Bell,et al.  Evaluation of temporal stability and spatial uniformity of blackbody thermal reference sources , 1995, Defense, Security, and Sensing.

[10]  A. Savitzky,et al.  Smoothing and Differentiation of Data by Simplified Least Squares Procedures. , 1964 .

[11]  R. Saunders,et al.  The Validation of ATSR Using Aircraft Radiometer Data over the Tropical Atlantic , 1994 .

[12]  H. B. Howell,et al.  Radiometric calibration of IR Fourier transform spectrometers: solution to a problem with the High-Resolution Interferometer Sounder. , 1988, Applied optics.

[13]  K. H. Berry,et al.  Emissivity of a cylindrical black-body cavity with a re-entrant cone and face , 1981 .

[14]  Stephan Bakan,et al.  Interferometric measurements of sea surface temperature and emissivity , 1997 .

[15]  I. Mason,et al.  Blackbody calibration sources of high accuracy for a spaceborne infrared instrument: the Along Track Scanning Radiometer. , 1996, Applied optics.