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Can we intercalibrate satellite measurements by means of data assimilation? An attempt on LEO satellites
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  • Angelica Maria Castillo Tibocha,
  • Yuri Y Shprits,
  • Nikita Alexandrovich Aseev,
  • Artem Smirnov,
  • Alexander Yurievich Drozdov,
  • Sebastian Cervantes,
  • Ingo Michaelis,
  • Marina Garcia,
  • Dedong Wang
Angelica Maria Castillo Tibocha
German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ)

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Yuri Y Shprits
Helmholtz Centre Potsdam
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Nikita Alexandrovich Aseev
Helmholtz-Zentrum Potsdam - Deutsches Geoforschungszentrum
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Artem Smirnov
GFZ- German Research Centre for Geosciences
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Alexander Yurievich Drozdov
University of California Los Angeles
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Sebastian Cervantes
University of Cologne
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Ingo Michaelis
GFZ German Research Centre For Geosciences
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Marina Garcia
GFZ German Research Centre For Geosciences
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Dedong Wang
GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences
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Abstract

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites offer extensive data of the radiation belt region, but utilizing these observations is challenging due to potential contamination and difficulty of intercalibration with spacecraft measurements at Highly Elliptic Orbit (HEO) that can observe all equatorial pitch-angles. This study introduces a new intercalibration method for satellite measurements of energetic electrons in the radiation belts using a data assimilation approach. We demonstrate our technique by intercalibrating the electron flux measurements of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) NOAA-15,-16,-17,-18,-19 and MetOp-02 against Van Allen Probes observations from October 2012 to September 2013. We use a reanalysis of the radiation belts obtained by assimilating Van Allen Probes and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) observations into 3-D Versatile Electron Radiation Belt (VERB-3D) code simulations via a standard Kalman filter. We compare the reanalysis to the POES dataset and estimate the flux ratios at each time, location and energy. From these ratios we derive energy and $L^*$ dependent recalibration coefficients. To validate our results, we analyse on-orbit conjunctions between POES and Van Allen Probes. The conjunction recalibration coefficients and the data-assimilative estimated coefficients show strong agreement, indicating that the differences between POES and Van Allen Probes observations remain within a factor of two. Additionally, the use of data assimilation allows for improved statistics, as the possible comparisons are considerably increased. Data-assimilative intercalibration of satellite observations is an efficient approach that enables intercalibration of large datasets using short periods of data.
06 Jul 2023Submitted to ESS Open Archive
07 Jul 2023Published in ESS Open Archive