Operational calibration of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-8 and -9 imagers and sounders

We describe the operational in-orbit calibration of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-8 and -9 imagers and sounders. In the infrared channels the calibration is based on observations of space and an onboard blackbody. The calibration equation expresses radiance as a quadratic in instrument output. To suppress noise in the blackbody sequences, we filter the calibration slopes. The calibration equation also accounts for an unwanted variation of the reflectances of the instruments’ scan mirrors with east–west scan position, which was not discovered until the instruments were in orbit. The visible channels are not calibrated, but the observations are provided relative to the level of space and are normalized to minimize east–west striping in the images. Users receive scaled radiances in a GOES variable format (GVAR) data stream. We describe the procedure users can apply to transform GVAR counts into radiances, temperatures, and mode-A counts.