NOAA-20 and S-NPP VIIRS Thermal Emissive Bands On-Orbit Calibration Algorithm Update and Long-Term Performance Inter-Comparison

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on board the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-20 (NOAA-20) Suomi Polar-orbiting Partnership Program (S-NPP) satellites were launched in late 2017 2011, respectively. This paper presents a recent update VIIRS thermal emissive bands (TEB) on-orbit calibration algorithm inter-compares long-term instrument TEB sensor data records (SDR) performances of two VIIRS, to support user communities. was improved mitigate biases during blackbody warm-up/cool-down (WUCD) events. Four WUCD bias correction methods implemented NOAA operational processing 2019: (1) Nominal-F method, (2) WUCD-C (3) Ltrace (4) Ltrace-2 method. Our evaluation results indicate that instruments have been generally stable comparable with each other, except NOAA-20 temperatures are lower than those S-NPP VIIRS. degradations detector responsivities remain small after 9 years on-orbit. longwave infrared degradation its early mission resolved by mid-mission outgassing. SDRs agree co-located Cross-track Sounder observations, daily averaged within 0.1 K at nadir. After implementation correction, residual similar for S-NPP, ~0.01 all bands.