Radiometric calibration of a non-imaging airborne spectrometer to measure the Greenland ice sheet surface

• Published in: Atmospheric Measurement Techniques
• Main Authors: C. J. Crawford, J. van den Bosch, K. M. Brunt, M. G. Hom, J. W. Cooper, D. J. Harding, J. J. Butler, P. W. Dabney, T. A. Neumann, C. S. Cleckner, T. Markus
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2019
• Subjects: Environmental engineering; TA170-171; Earthwork. Foundations; TA715-787; Greenland; Bare Rock; Ice Sheet; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-12-1913-2019; https://doaj.org/article/ee52f9f7c01942d183b0900c0702e719

Methods to radiometrically calibrate a non-imaging airborne visible-to-shortwave infrared (VSWIR) spectrometer to measure the Greenland ice sheet surface are presented. Airborne VSWIR measurement performance for bright Greenland ice and dark bare rock/soil targets is compared against the MODerate resolution atmospheric TRANsmission (MODTRAN ® ) radiative transfer code (version 6.0), and a coincident Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) acquisition on 29 July 2015 during an in-flight radiometric calibration experiment. Airborne remote sensing flights were carried out in northwestern Greenland in preparation for the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite 2 (ICESat-2) laser altimeter mission. A total of nine science flights were conducted over the Greenland ice sheet, sea ice, and open-ocean water. The campaign's primary purpose was to correlate green laser pulse penetration into snow and ice with spectroscopic-derived surface properties. An experimental airborne instrument configuration that included a nadir-viewing (looking downward at the surface) non-imaging Analytical Spectral Devices (ASD) Inc. spectrometer that measured upwelling VSWIR (0.35 to 2.5 µ m) spectral radiance ( <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M2" display="inline" overflow="scroll" dspmath="mathml"><mrow class="unit"><mi mathvariant="normal">W</mi><mspace width="0.125em" linebreak="nobreak"/><msup><mi mathvariant="normal">m</mi><mrow><mo>-</mo><mn mathvariant="normal">2</mn></mrow></msup><mspace width="0.125em" linebreak="nobreak"/><msup><mi mathvariant="normal">sr</mi><mrow><mo>-</mo><mn mathvariant="normal">1</mn></mrow></msup><mspace linebreak="nobreak" width="0.125em"/><mi mathvariant="normal">µ</mi><msup><mi mathvariant="normal">m</mi><mrow><mo>-</mo><mn ...