Wenhui Wang, ESSIC/CISESS Associate Research Scientist, is first author on a new paper titled “An Improved Method for VIIRS Radiance Limit Verification and Saturation Rollover Flagging” recently published in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing. Other ESSIC/CISESS scientists credited on the project include Slawomir Blonski, Bin Zhang, and Sirish Uprety.
This article presents an improved radiance limit verification and saturation rollover flagging method for the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) reflective solar band (RSB) and thermal emissive band (TEB) sensor data records (SDRs). The authors introduce platform (satellite)-dependent radiance limits to account for the different radiometric characteristics of the VIIRS onboard the Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-20 (NOAA-20) satellites.
Results indicate that saturation rollover flagging can be significantly improved. Currently, the improved scheme of saturation rollover flagging is only applied to NOAA-20 and S-NPP M6, but application to other RSB and TEB bands can be achieved by updating the Quality Assurance lookup table. The team also resolved the issue of radiance and brightness temperature mismatch for NOAA-20 TEBs. A VIIRS SDR algorithm code change for the improved method has been implemented in the NOAA operational processing for NOAA-20 and S-NPP since March 25, 2019. It can also be applied to the VIIRS onboard the future Joint Polar Satellite System satellites (J2-J4).
Wang supports calibration and validation of VIIRS onboard Suomi-NPP/NOAA-20 and METimage onboard EPS-SG. Bin Zhang is an ESSIC/CISESS assistant research scientist. His research interests include ocean circulation dynamics and ocean state forecasting, satellite sensor calibration/validation. Uprety is an ESSIC/CISESS senior faculty specialist as well as a member of the NOAA STAR VIIRS calibration support team. He is primarily working on the post-launch calibration and validation of Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20 VIIRS.
To access the article, click here: “An Improved Method for VIIRS Radiance Limit Verification and Saturation Rollover Flagging”.
