Blackbody Calibration
Introduction | Bibliography | Posters / Presentations
The Geosynchronous Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer (GIFTS) instrument requires highly accurate radiometric calibration in order to provide its enormous advances in water vapor, wind, temperature, and trace gas profiling. The calibration scheme involves two internal blackbody sources as well a view of space and is based upon as well as extends, well-established general techniques for calibrating interferometer instruments. An instrument-level GIFTS calibration model involving blackbody temperature and temperature uncertainty, blackbody emissivity and emissivity uncertainty, and temperatures of key instrument components has also been developed and used to assess various uncertainties with this scheme. The end result is an instrument calibration accuracy that is better than 1 K (3-sigma) and a reproducibility that is better than ±0.2 K.