A calibration algorithm design and analysis for VIIRS Thermal Emissive Bands based on the EOS MODIS approach

The Visible and Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) is a key instrument for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). NPOESS is the next generation of US polar orbiting operational weather satellites. The VIIRS sensor has 22 spectral bands with wavelengths from 0.4 to 12 μm and nadir spatial resolution of 0.375 km (5 bands) and 0.75 km (17 bands). The first flight of the VIIRS will be on the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP), and the Npp data sets provide a bridge from the Earth Observing System (EOS) MODIS research and development program into NPOESS operational program. For the VIIRS Thermal Emissive Bands (TEB) in the infrared, the major change in the VIIRS design from MODIS is a transition to a rotating telescope foreoptics to replace a single-element scan mirror. The VIIRS TEB calibration equation for earth observations is developed using principals on which the MODIS TEB calibration is developed. The primary difference in the radiometric calibration concepts for VIIRS compared to MODIS is a weakly coupled sensitivity on VIIRS to the telescope optics temperatures.