Radiometric performance assessment of Suomi NPP VIIRS SWIR Band (2.25 μm)

Suomi NPP VIIRS SWIR band M11 (2.25 μm) has larger radiometric uncertainty compared to the rest of the reflective solar bands. This is due to a number of reasons including prelaunch calibration uncertainties. One of the most commonly used technique to verify the radiometric stability and accuracy of VIIRS is by intercomparing it with other well calibrated radiometers such as MODIS. However one of the limitations of using MODIS is that VIIRS band M11 RSR doesn’t overlap with MODIS bands at all. Thus the accuracy of intercomparison relies completely on how well the spectral differences are analyzed over the given target. This study uses desert sites to analyze M11 radiometric performance. In order to better match the RSR between instruments, we have chosen Landsat 8 OLI SWIR band 2 (2.20 μm) to perform intercomparison. This is mainly because OLI SWIR band 2 fully covers the VIIRS band M11 even though OLI has much wider RSR compared to VIIRS. The impact due to spectral differences is estimated and accounted for using EO-1 Hyperion observations and MODTRAN.