A preliminary study of aggregating VIIRS I3 to generate M10 for adding a future water vapor band
Water vapor observation at channels with central wavelength around 6.5 um is of great importance in weather forecasting and climate change detection, such as in MODIS, GOES, and GOES R series of satellites. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) onboard Suomi NPP has 22 bands, however, does not have a water vapor sensing band, and the current VIIRS design cannot make space for additional band. Since the high resolution (375m) imagery band I03 and moderate resolution (750m) band M10, have very similar Spectral Response Functions centered at 1.61 um, it is possible to replace M10 observations with that from I03 to make space for a new water vapor band. However, the impact of removing M10 on different users should be assessed thoroughly. M10 and I03 are mainly used for obtaining surface reflectance at different resolution and for snow detection. M10 can also be used in cloud and aerosol detection, and in detecting night fire from gas flares and combustion sources. In this study, we examined the VIIRS Sensor Data Record (SDR) dataset and compared the radiance from M10 and aggregated I03 (to M10) with different earth observations. At day time, the M10 and I03 have very good agreement, but the radiance ratio between them is affected mainly by the uniformity of I03 pixels and different surface types. Over snow surface, the radiance scatterplot shows less scattered than that with no snow, indicating I03 has similar ability as M10 in snow detection. Limited night datasets indicate radiance of I03 and M10 are different, but I03 may also have superior ability in detecting night fire from gas flares and combustion sources. This study provides an early assessment of the feasibility of aggregating I03 to M10 in order to replace the M10 with a water vapor band.
2016 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS)