Ground-based vicarious radiometric calibration of Terra MODIS

Accurate radiometric calibration is required by Earth-observing systems to ensure that the derived data products are of the highest quality. Preflight calibration is used as a baseline to understand the system before it is launched on orbit, while post-launch calibration is used to understand changes that may have occurred due to the nature of launching an instrument into space. On-orbit radiometric calibration ensures that changes in the system, including any onboard calibration sources, can be monitored. The Remote Sensing Group at the University of Arizona has been directly involved in the ground-based vicarious calibration of both Terra and Aqua MODIS since their respective launches in 1999 and 2002. RSG personnel are present at a test site during sensor overpass, and surface reflectance and atmospheric attenuation measurements are used as inputs to a radiative transfer code to determine the top-of-atmosphere radiance for the sensor under test. In the case of Terra MODIS, a 1-km2 site at Railroad Valley, Nevada, is used as a test site. This work presents results obtained using the reflectance-based approach at RSG’s Railroad Valley test site. Results from 10 years of in situ data collection at Railroad Valley show a percent difference in the seven land spectral channels between RSG and Terra MODIS ranging from 1.6 % in channel 6 (1632 nm), to 5.1% in channel 4 (553 nm). The average percent difference for Terra MODIS’s seven land channels and RSG is 3.5%. The uncertainty is within the 3-5% predicted for ground-based vicarious calibration.