Early Radiometric Calibration Performances of GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager

摘要

GOES-16, which was launched on 19 November 2017, is the first of the next generation of geostationary weather satellites of NOAA. The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) is the primary instrument and mission critical payload onboard imaging the Earth with 16 different spectral bands covering 6 visibleear-infrared (VNIR) bands and 10 infrared (IR) bands. Although the GOES-16 ABI data are currently experimental and undergoing testing, in this study we focus on reporting some preliminary assessment results of the ABI radiometric calibration performance during the post-launch test (PLT) and post-launch product tests (PLPT) period. Our results show that the ABI IR full-disk (FD) images mean brightness temperature (Tb) bias with respect to S-NPP/CrlS and Metop-B/IASI of less than 0.3K. Diurnal variation is very small with a jump of less than 0.15K occurring twice a day around satellite local noon and midnight. The ABI VNIR radiometric calibration has a mean reflectance difference to SNPP/VIIRS of less than 5% for all the 6 VNIR bands except for B02 (0.64um), which was about 8% brighter than corresponding VIIRS data during the PLT period. It may be noted that calibration of the VNIR bands experienced instabilities associated with ground system (GS) software patch testing and data receiving site failover testing, which can be reflected with the time-series monitoring from different earth and space-based invariant targets. Validations and investigations are still ongoing to improve the ABI imagery and data quality.