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In contrast to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) current geostationary imagers for operational weather forecasting, the next generation imager, the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) aboard the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R-Series (GOES-R), will have six reflective solar bands - five more than currently available. These bands will be used for applications such as aerosol retrievals, which are influenced by polarization effects. These effects are determined by two factors: instrument polarization sensitivity and the polarization states of the observations. The former is measured as part of the pre-launch testing program performed by the instrument vendor. We analyzed the results of the pre-launch polarization sensitivity measurements of the 0.47 μm and 0.64 μm channels and used them in conjunction with simulated scene polarization states to estimate potential on-orbit radiometric impacts. The pre-launch test setups involved illuminating the ABI with an integrating sphere through either one or two polarizers. The measurement with one (rotating) polarizer yields the degree of linear polarization of ABI, and the measurements using two polarizers (one rotating and one fixed) characterized the non-ideal properties of the polarizer. To estimate the radiometric performance impacts from the instrument polarization sensitivity, we simulated polarized scenes using a radiative transfer code and accounted for the instrument polarization sensitivity over its field of regard. The results show the variation in the polarization impacts over the day and by regions of the full disk can reach up to 3.2% for the 0.47μm channel and 4.8% for the 0.64μm channel. Geostationary orbiters like the ABI give the unique opportunity to show these impacts throughout the day compared to low earth orbiters, which are more limited to certain times of day. This work may enhance the ability to diagnose anomalies on-orbit.
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