VIIRS Ice Surface Temperature Product Validation
Version 1 Validation Statement
Figure 1. Figure 1. Counterclockwise flight track (dark orange) of NASA’s P3 on April 19, 2019, overlaying on the NASA VNP30 IST product.
Validation at stage 1 has been achieved for the NASA VIIRS Ice Surface Temperature (IST) (VNP30) product. PI M. Tschudi compared study IST measurements during NASA’s IceBridge campaign to the VIIRS/NPP Ice Surface Temperature 6-Min L2 Swath 750m, Version 1, which is publicly available at NSIDC. During the IceBridge campaign, a KT-19 nadir-pointing radiometer was mounted on the underside of a P-3 aircraft to measure radiometric surface temperature. On April 6, 2019, the NASA P-3 flew from Thule, Greenland to the Northwest, crossing the Canadian Archipelago and a part of the Arctic Ocean, eventually aligning with an ICESat-2 overpass (Figure 1). The acquired KT-19 data are used here to compare with the VIIRS IST (VNP30) product.
The surface temperature acquired by the KT-19 over sea ice off the coast of Greenland is compared to the coincident IST from the NASA VNP30 product (Figure 2).
Figure 2. NASA VNP30 IST (purple) and the coincident IceBridge KT-19 measured surface temperature (blue).For this plot, values were smoothed with a running 1000-point filter
It is evident from Figure 2 that the VNP30 IST product compares favorably to the IST acquired by the KT-19 during the IceBridge flight. The mean IST for the VNP30 IST was 248.13K; for the KT-19, 247.59K. Standard deviations were 3.23K and 5.81K, respectively.
Support Studies
Tschudi, M., G. Riggs, D. K. Hall, and M. O. Román. 2017. VIIRS/NPP Ice Surface Temperature 6-Min L2 Swath 750m Products:
A Consistent and High Quality Earth System Data Record, IEEE TGRS, doi: 10.1109/JSTARS.2017.2779330.
