Assessment of polarization correction impact on the calibration of Terra MODIS reflective solar bands

The Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), launched in 1999 on Terra and 2002 on Aqua spacecraft respectively, is a scanning radiometer that covers a wavelength range from 0.4 mu m to 14.4 mu m and scans the Earth over an angular range from -55 degrees to + 55 degrees. After a few years in the Terra mission, it became extremely challenging to characterize the changes in the sensor gain and response versus scan angle (RVS) at short wavelengths due to significant degradation and increased polarization sensitivity. To better characterize the system-level degradation, the MODIS Characterization Support Team (MCST) developed an enhanced approach in Collection-6 (C6) L1B algorithm by supplementing the on-board calibration data with the Earth-scene response trends at various scan angles obtained from the pseudo-invariant desert sites. However, the trends at short wavelengths experienced significant impact due to the increased polarization sensitivity, especially at the end of scan. In this study, a polarization correction algorithm developed by MCST is applied to the Terra MODIS RSB response trends obtained from the desert sites. The trends after polarization correction are used to derive the gain and RVS based on the existing MODIS C6 calibration algorithm. Impact of the polarization correction is examined for gain, RVS and their fitting uncertainties over the entire mission. The results of this study provide useful information on how to further improve accuracy and stability of the calibrated L1B product.