ScaRaB: first results of absolute and cross calibration

ScaRaB (SCAnner for RAdiation Budget) is the name of three radiometers whose two first flight models have been launched in 1994 and 1997. The instruments were mounted on-board Russian satellites, METEOR and RESURS. On October 12 th 2011, a last model has been launched from the Indian site of Sriharikota. ScaRaB is a passenger of MEGHA-TROPIQUES, an Indo-French joint Satellite Mission for studying the water cycle and energy exchanges in the tropics. ScaRaB is composed of four parallel and independent channels. Channel-2 and channel-3 are considered as the main ones. Channel-1 is dedicated to measure solar radiance (0.5 to 0.7 μm) while channel-4 (10 to 13 μm) is an infrared window. The absolute calibration of ScaRab is assured by internal calibration sources (black bodies and a lamp for channel-1). However, during the commissioning phase, the lamp used for the absolute calibration of channel-1 revealed to be inaccurate. We propose here an alternative calibration method based on terrestrial targets. Due to the spectral range of channel-1, only calibration over desert sites (temporal monitoring) and clouds (cross band) is suitable. Desert sites have been widely used for sensor calibration since they have a stable spectral response over time. Because of their high reflectances, the atmospheric effect on the upward radiance is relatively minimal. In addition, they are spatially uniform. Their temporal instability without atmospheric correction has been determined to be less than 1-2% over a year. Very-high-altitude (10 km) bright clouds are good validation targets in the visible and near-infrared spectra because of their high spectrally consistent reflectance. If the clouds are very high, there is no need to correct aerosol scattering and water vapor absorption as both aerosol and water vapor are distributed near the surface. Only Rayleigh scattering and ozone absorption need to be considered. This method has been found to give a 4% uncertainty. Radiometric cross calibration of Earth observation sensors is a crucial need to guarantee or quantify the consistency of measurements from different sensors. ScaRaB is compatible with CERES mission. Two main spectral bands are measured by the radiometer: A short-wave channel (0.2 to 4 μm) dedicated to solar fluxes and a Total channel (0.2 to 200 μm) for fluxes combining the infrared earth radiance and the albedo. The earth long-wave radiance is isolated by subtracting the short-wave channel to the Total channel. Both Earth Radiation Budget missions (CERES and ScaRaB) have the same specification: to provide an accuracy of ~1% in the measurement of short-wave and long-wave radiances and an estimation of the short-wave and long-wave fluxes less than 10 W/m 2 . We use the CERES PAPS and Cross-Track SSF datasets for direct radiances and fluxes comparisons during two validation phases. The first one occurred during April 17 th to June 8 th (51 days) in 2012 and the second one occurred between March 22 th and May 31 st 2015. The first validation campaign has been held with the CERES team using the Terra FM2 data. The CERES PAPS mode was used to align the swath scan, in order to increase the collocated pixels between the two instruments. This campaign allowed us to validate the ScaRaB radiances and to refine the error budget. The second validation campaign aims to provide a temporal monitoring of ScaRab calibration.