The NOAA National Calibration Center (NCC), established under the Center
for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR), facilitates improved accuracy
of NOAA's weather, climate, and ocean models through sharing of technical
practices for fine tuning remotely-sensed data from environmental satellites
among different programs and agencies. The NCC's mission is to provide common
standards and methodology for the user community as well as encourage communication
through a centralized Calibration Knowledge Base. This practice provides support
to NOAA's satellite programs by enforcing stricter and more widespread quality
control on satellite data from the Global Earth Observation System of Systems
(GEOSS), which will improve efficiency and reduce costs as the community strives
to meet the growing needs for high quality satellite data.
The NCC near-term priority is to provide critical support to the calibration/validation of the Suomi NPP/J1/J2 Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), and GOES-R Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI), in collaboration and partnership with NASA, NIST, Cooperative Institutes, The Aerospace Corporation, MIT/Lincoln Lab., private industry, and other organizations.