An automatic method to calibrate Meteosat visible images

Abstract : A method is described for the automatic calibration of the successive operational Meteosat sensors in the visible range since 1985. The autocalibration method is based on a statistical analysis of the images. This approach does not require any information about atmospheric and surface parameters. As a starting point, the absolute vicarious calibration for only one image in the whole time-series is needed, which can be provided by previous published works. Our results are fully consistent with previous studies. Several tests have been performed to validate the method and check its robustness and reliability.