Intercalibrated Brightness Temperature

Summary

The L1C-TC product converts the brightness temperatures from each TMS instrument to that of a reference TMS instrument (Tomorrow-S1). This is useful for applications that require a homogeneous data record from multiple satellites. The objective of L1C-TC is to remove the effect of differences in the spectral response function between the different TMS instruments.

Product Information

The L1C-TC datasets are stored as netCDF4 files. The filename is the following format:

TMS[satellite number].1C-TC.V[major version]–[minor version].[stream].ST[start time of dataset].ET[end time of dataset].CT[creation time of dataset].nc

These come in two streams: 

• Near-real-time (NRT): These files are generated as soon as TMS data is received at a ground station, and are separated into distinct granules that are separated by spacecraft maneuvers, transmit events, or other data gaps between valid science observations. A granule may be as little as 128 scans (about 4 minutes) or as long as 512 scans (20 minutes). Typically, around 100 NRT granules are produced each day per satellite.
• Final processing (not yet available): These files are separated into orbits that begin at each ascending equator crossing. These contain all data that was collected during the orbit, with flags for the various events (e.g., maneuvers, transmit events) that can affect science data quality. Typically, 15-16 orbits each day are produced for each satellite.

The current (V00-03) L1C-TC data product maturity is beta. The intercalibration to a reference instrument is based on pre-launch simulations and has not been validated. Once accuracy requirements have been verified, the product status will be considered validated (major version number >= 1).