The Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS) onboard the Geostationary Korean Multi-Purpose Satellite 2B was successfully launched in February 2020. GEMS is a hyperspectral spectrometer measuring solar irradiance and Earth radiance in the wavelength range of 300 to 500 nm. This paper introduces the spectral calibration algorithm for GEMS, which uses a nonlinear least-squares approach. Sensitivity tests for a series of unknown algorithm parameters such as spectral range for fitting, spectral response function (SRF), and reference spectrum were conducted using the synthetic GEMS spectrum prepared with the ground-measured GEMS SRF. The test results show that the required accuracy of 0.002 nm is achievable provided the SRF and the high-resolution reference spectrum are properly prepared. Such a satisfactory performance is possible mainly due to the inclusion of additional fitting parameters of spectral scales (shift, squeeze, and high order shifts) and SRF (width, shape and asymmetry). For the application to the actual GEMS data, in-orbit SRF is to be monitored using an analytic SRF function and the measured GEMS solar irradiance, while a reference spectrum is going to be selected during the instrument in-orbit test. The calibrated GEMS data is expected to be released by the end of 2020.

The Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS), an ultraviolet and visible imaging spectrometer, provides air-quality information over a large area of the Asia Pacific region with a high spatiotemporal resolution. To assure the reliability of trace gas retrieval, accurate knowledge of the spectral response function (SRF) is critical for spectral calibration as well as retrieval algorithms. Here, we characterize the GEMS SRF using prelaunch SRFs obtained with the monochromatic laser measurements during the ground test and inflight SRFs retrieved using the solar irradiance measurements after the launch. The prelaunch SRFs are analyzed in terms of shape (skewness and kurtosis), width, and under-sampling and show that the full-width at half-maximum is smaller than 0.6 nm with a maximum of 0.589 nm. The variations along both the spectral and spatial directions are smooth and within 3.65%, indicating a highly homogenous and stable optical system of GEMS. To characterize the prelaunch SRFs and monitor the behavior of inflight SRFs, we applied several analytical functions including asymmetric super Gaussian (ASG) and hybrid Gaussians to the prelaunch SRFs. The spectral fitting of the measured GEMS irradiance with a reference spectrum shows that the ASG to be the best representative of the GEMS SRFs. The inflight SRFs, retrieved with the GEMS irradiances and the ASG, agree well with the prelaunch SRFs, suggesting that the inflight spectral performance and characteristics of GEMS are similar to those investigated from the on-ground characterization.

As one of geostationary earth orbit constellation for environmental monitoring over the next decade, the Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS) has been designed to observe the Asia-Pacific region to provide information on atmospheric chemicals, aerosols, and cloud properties. In order to continuously monitor sensor performance after its launch in early 2020, we suggest in this paper deep convective clouds (DCCs) as a possible target for the vicarious calibration of the GEMS, the first ultraviolet and visible hyperspectral sensor onboard a geostationary satellite. The Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) and the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) are used as a proxy for GEMS, and a conventional DCC-detection approach applying a thermal threshold test is used for DCC detection based on collocations with the Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) onboard the Himawari-8 geostationary satellite. DCCs are frequently detected over the GEMS observation area at an average of over 200 pixels within a single observation scene. Considering the spatial resolution of the GEMS (3.5 $\times$ 8 km²), which is similar to the TROPOMI and its temporal resolution (eight times a day), the availability of DCCs is expected to be sufficient for the vicarious calibration of the GEMS. Inspection of the DCC reflectivity spectra estimated from OMI and TROPOMI data also shows promising results. The estimated DCC spectra are in good agreement within a known uncertainty range with comparable spectral features even with different observation geometries and sensor characteristics. When DCC detection is improved further by applying both visible and infrared tests, the variability of DCC reflectivity from TROPOMI data is reduced from 10% to 5%. This is mainly due to the efficient screening out of cold, thin cirrus clouds in the visible test and of bright, warm clouds in the infrared test. Precise DCC detection is also expected to contribute to the accurate characterization of cloud reflectivity, which will be investigated further in future research.

Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS), the first UV-VIS hyperspectral imaging spectrometer onboard a geostationary satellite launched in February 2020, is working with overall performances as well as characteristics aligned with ground-based characterizations. However, there are noticeable issues, especially in the solar irradiances which show a significant discrepancy compared to reference datasets, the focus of current study. The key discrepancy is the variation of measured solar irradiance along the time as well as space of which the root causes are traced back to the angular dependence of the diffuser transmittance and its degradation, both of which critically impact the accuracy of the GEMS Level-2 data products. To mitigate the discrepancy, current study introduces an empirical correction approach that uses the correlation between azimuth angle and the measured daily irradiance using 3.5 years of data. With the correction, the spatial and seasonal discrepancies in both irradiance and Earth reflectance disappeared almost completely. Furthermore, the mean bias and root mean square deviation against the solar reference spectrum decrease by 12% and 5%, respectively. However, the corrected irradiance values are still lower than those from reference data and other satellites, indicating the potential need for future updates to the radiometric calibration coefficients.