On-orbit stability and performance of the Clouds and Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) Instruments onboard the Aqua and Terra Spacecraft

Mohan Shankar; Kory Priestley; Nitchie Smith; Susan Thomas; Dale Walikainen

doi:10.1117/12.2060871

25 September 2014 On-orbit stability and performance of the Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument sensors onboard the Aqua and Terra Spacecraft

Mohan Shankar, Kory Priestley, Nitchie Smith, Susan Thomas, Dale Walikainen

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 9218, Earth Observing Systems XIX; 92180Q (2014) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2060871
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2014, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

The Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments onboard the Terra and Aqua spacecraft are part of the NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) constellation to make long-term observations of the earth. CERES measures the earth-reflected shortwave energy as well as the earth-emitted thermal energy, which are two components of the earth’s radiation energy budget. These measurements are made by five instruments- Flight Models (FM) 1 and 2 onboard Terra, FMs 3 and 4 onboard Aqua and FM5 onboard Suomi NPP. Each instrument comprises three sensors that measure the radiances in different wavelength bands- a shortwave sensor that measures in the 0.3 to 5 micron band, a total sensor that measures all the incident energy (0.3-200 microns) and a window sensor that measures the water-vapor window region of 8 to 12 microns. The stability of the sensors is monitored through on-orbit calibration and validation activities. On-orbit calibration is carried out using the Internal Calibration Module (ICM) that consists of a tungsten lamp, blackbodies, and a solar diffuser known as the Mirror Attenuator Mosaic (MAM). The ICM calibration provides information about the stability of the sensors’ broadband radiometric gains on-orbit. Several validation studies are conducted in order to monitor the behavior of the instruments in various spectral bands. The CERES Edition-4 data products for FM1-FM4 incorporate the latest corrections to the sensor responses using the calibration techniques. In this paper, we present the on-orbit performance stability as well as some validation studies used in deriving the CERES Edition-4 data products from all four instruments.

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Mohan Shankar, Kory Priestley, Nitchie Smith, Susan Thomas, and Dale Walikainen "On-orbit stability and performance of the Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument sensors onboard the Aqua and Terra Spacecraft", Proc. SPIE 9218, Earth Observing Systems XIX, 92180Q (25 September 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2060871

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