Publications

Ma, Shuo; Yan, Wei; Huang, Yun-Xian; Al, Wei-Hua; Zhao, Xianbin (2015). Vicarious calibration of S-NPP/VIIRS day-night band using deep convective clouds. REMOTE SENSING OF ENVIRONMENT, 158, 42-55.

Abstract
The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) satellite was successfully launched in 28 October 2011. The day-night band (DNB) is mounted on the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on board the NPP to greatly improve upon the night time imaging capabilities. In order to cover the wide dynamic radiation range, the Low Gain Stage (LGS), Median Gain Stage (MGS) and High Gain Stage (HGS) are employed to view the earth at daytime, twilight and nighttime respectively. Especially, the radiance measured at night is relatively low, so the radiometric calibration is too difficult to calculate directly. To independently evaluate the radiometric calibration of DNB HGS at night, the vicarious calibration of S-NPP/VIIRS DNB on the basis of the deep convection clouds (DCCs) under lunar illumination is presented. DCCs are selected by applying the spatial homogeneity criteria of brightness temperature and radiance. To determine the macro- and microphysical properties of DCCs at night, the CloudSat-CALIPSO nighttime observation data for 2-year period from January 2009 to December 2010 are analyzed. It is demonstrated that the average of the cloud top heights, cloud base heights, and cloud effective radius are 15 km, 0.9 km and 30 pm separately over tropical area from 2009 to 2010. These properties of DCCs are assumed to be the typical values for DCCs. The top of atmosphere reflectance values of the identified DCC targets at the VIIRS DNB at night are simulated by the promoted radiative transfer model, which combined the lunar irradiance model with the SCIATRAN to realize the radiative transfer simulation at anytime. The comparison between the simulated reflectance values and the corresponding DNB HGS measurements for a 1-year period from August 2012 to July 2013 shows that, on a daily basis, the DNB HGS data are calibrated on orbit within a 4.9% 8.8% uncertainty range near full moon. The vicarious calibration method using DCCs are suggested to be reliably used for DNB HGS radiometric calibration directly. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

DOI:
10.1016/j.rse.2014.11.006

ISSN:
0034-4257