Abstract

Advanced satellite sensors are tasked with improving measurements of the Earth’s atmosphere, clouds, and surface to enable enhancements in weather prediction, climate monitoring capability, and environmental change detection. Measurement system validation is critical to achieving this goal and maximizing research and operational utility of resultant data. This study will address some of the challenges associated with validating infrared radiances, while exploiting the benefits obtained from coincident high spectral/spatial resolution observations from the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Airborne Sounder Testbed-Interferometer (NAST-I) during recent field campaigns. Methodology employed herein for Aqua Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder (AIRS) radiance validation will also be applied to corresponding data from Metop IASI and other future advanced hyperspectral and ultraspectral systems upon data availability. NAST-I was a key aircraft sensor flown in the recent European AQUA Thermodynamic Experiment (EAQUATE). Observations from this airborne interferometer were obtained spatially and temporally coincident with other ground-, balloon-, airborne-, and satellite-based measurement systems, specifically the AIRS on the Aqua satellite. Inter-comparisons of infrared spectral radiances measured from these independent airborne and spaceborne measurement systems during EAQUATE and other recent NAST field campaigns will be presented.

© 2007 Optical Society of America