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Vicarious calibration and validation techniques are important tools to ensure the long-term stability and inter-sensor consistency of satellite sensors making observations in the solar-reflective spectral domain. Automated test sites, which have continuous in situ monitoring of both ground reflectance and atmospheric conditions, can greatly increase the match-up possibilities for a wide range of space agency and commercial sensors. The Baotou calibration and validation test site in China provides operational high-accuracy and high-stability vicarious calibration and validation for high spatial resolution solar-reflective remote-sensing sensors. Two sites, given the abbreviations BTCN (an artificial site) and BSCN (a natural sandy site), have been selected as reference sites for the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites radiometric calibration network (RadCalNet). RadCalNet requires sites to provide data in a consistent format but does not specify the required operational conditions for a RadCalNet site. The two Baotou sites are the only sites to date that make spectral measurements for their continuous operation. One of the core principles of RadCalNet is that each site should have a metrologically rigorous uncertainty budget which also describes the site's traceability to the international system of units, the SI. This paper shows a formalized metrological approach to determining and documenting the uncertainty budget and traceability of a RadCalNet site. This approach follows the Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement. The paper describes the uncertainty analysis for bottom-of-atmosphere and top-of-atmosphere reflectance in the spectral region from 400 to 1000 nm for the Baotou sites and gives preliminary results for the uncertainty propagating this to top-of-atmosphere reflectance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Providing uncertainties in satellite datasets used for Earth observation can be a daunting prospect because of the many processing stages and input data required to convert raw detector counts to calibrated radiances. The Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR) was designed to provide measurements of the Earth's surface for operational and climate applications. In this paper the authors describe the traceability chain and derivation of uncertainty estimates for the thermal infrared channel radiometry. Starting from the instrument model, the contributing input quantities are identified to build up an uncertainty effects tree. The characterisation of each input effect is described, and uncertainty estimates provided which are used to derive the combined uncertainties as a function of scene temperature. The SLSTR Level-1 data products provide uncertainty estimates for fully random effects (noise) and systematic effects that can be mapped for each image pixel, examples of which are shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]