CLARREO: Reference Inter-Calibration on Orbit With Reflected Solar Spectrometer

The CLARREO approach for reference intercalibration is based on obtaining coincident highly accurate spectral reflectance and reflected radiance measurements, and establish an on-orbit reference for existing Earth viewing reflected solar radiation sensors: CERES and VIIRS on JPSS satellites, AVHRR and follow-on imagers on MetOp, and imagers on GEO platforms. The mission goal is to be able to provide CLARREO RS reference observations that are matched in space, time, and viewing angles with measurements from the aforementioned instruments, with sampling sufficient to overcome the random error sources from imperfect data matching and instrument noise. The intercalibration method is to monitor over time changes in targeted sensor response function parameters: effective offset, gain, nonlinearity, spectral degradation, and sensitivity to polarization of optics.