2011

The Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) mission addresses the need to observe highaccuracy, long-term climate change trends and to use decadal change observations as the most critical method to determine the accuracy of climate change. The CLARREO Project will implement a spaceborne earth observation mission designed to provide rigorous SI-traceable observations (i.e., radiance, reflectance, and refractivity) that are sensitive to a wide range of key decadal change variables. The instrument suite includes emitted infrared spectrometers, global navigation receivers for radio occultation, and reflected solar spectrometers. The measurements will be acquired for a period of five years and will enable follow-on missions to extend the climate record over the decades needed to understand climate change. This work describes a preliminary error budget for the RS sensor. The RS sensor will retrieve at-sensor reflectance over the spectral range from 320 to 2300 nm with 500-m GIFOV and a 100-km swath width. The current design is based on an Offner spectrometer with two separate focal planes each with its own entrance aperture and grating covering spectral ranges of 320-640, 600-2300 nm. Reflectance is obtained from the ratio of measurements of radiance while viewing the earth's surface to measurements of irradiance while viewing the sun. The requirement for the RS instrument is that the reflectance must be traceable to SI standards at an absolute uncertainty <0.3%. The calibration approach to achieve the ambitious 0.3% absolute calibration uncertainty is predicated on a reliance on heritage hardware, reduction of sensor complexity, and adherence to detector-based calibration standards. The design above has been used to develop a preliminary error budget that meets the 0.3% absolute requirement. Key components in the error budget are geometry differences between the solar and earth views, knowledge of attenuator behavior when viewing the sun, and sensor behavior such as detector linearity and noise behavior. Methods for demonstrating this error budget are also presented.