Radiometric Calibration Analysis for Thermal Infrared Data From MERSI-LL Onboard the Dust-Dawn Orbiting Satellite FY3E

FengYun-3E (FY3E) is the world's first dust-dawn orbiting meteorological satellite for civil use, which has filled the vacancy of global early-morning-orbit satellite observation by working together with FengYun-3C and FengYun-3D satellites. The Medium Resolution Spectral Imager-Low Light (MERSI-LL) sensor carried by FY3E can detect surface temperature variation. The radiometric calibration conditions of MERSI-LL thermal infrared bands were evaluated using the collected field measurements and atmospheric transfer simulations during 5–23 December, 2022, at Lake Erhai. A thermal infrared radiometer equipped on an unmanned surface vehicle was used to continuously collect surface-emitted radiance and water temperature. Atmospheric conditions, surface emissivity, and aerosol optical depth measured near-field experiment site were adopted by atmospheric radiative transfer code to calculate the influence of atmosphere on long-wave radiation during the propagation from land surface to satellite aperture. The good in-orbit operational status could be detected according to our calibration experiments, and the calibration analysis suggested that the differences between the simulated brightness temperature and satellite-based brightness temperature are 0.71 K with an RMSE of 0.79 K and 0.11 K with an RMSE of 0.47 K for channels 6 and 7, respectively, which achieved better or similar calibration accuracy by comparing with TIR channels of other FengYun satellites.