Assessment of Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership VIIRS Emissive Band Calibration and Inter-Sensor Comparisons

Visible-Infrared Imager-Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) have similar thermal emissive bands and are used to determine surface temperature, fire product, and cloud properties. The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) is a hyperspectral sensor covering the most infrared spectrum. This study focuses on VIIRS sensor performance in which inter-sensor comparisons are crucial to the sensor´s verification and validation. VIIRS thermal emissive bands (TEB) calibration data (blackbody and space counts) have been analyzed. The analysis results indicate that VIIRS TEB is stable. VIIRS Blackbody temperature is stable, too. The six platinum resistance thermometers (PRTs) are also stable, except for the third and sixth PRTs have a periodic variation of 50 mK. Using the calibration data during the Blackbody temperature cool down and warm up, we found that noise equivalent deviation of temperatures (NeDT) varies with the Blackbody temperature. We developed a model that can predict the scene temperature dependent NeDT for the VIIRS M15 band. Comparisons between the VIIRS and other sensors such as AVHRR, MODIS and CrIS demonstrated that VIIRS TEB agrees generally with those sensors within 0.5 Kelvin. It was found that azimuth angle difference between two detectors for the same scan can be very large, causing VIIRS image striping.