Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) is a 10-channel spectro-radiometer (317 – 780 nm) onboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) DSCOVR spacecraft located at the Earth-Sun Lagrange-1 (L-1) point giving EPIC a unique angular perspective that is used in science applications to measure ozone, aerosols, cloud reflectivity, cloud height, vegetation properties, and ultraviolet (UV) radiation estimates at Earth's surface. EPIC provides ten narrow-band spectral images of the entire sunlit face of the Earth using a 2048x2048 pixel CCD (Charge Coupled Device) detector coupled to a 30-cm aperture Cassegrain telescope. EPIC collects radiance data from the Earth and other sources through the Camera/Telescope Assembly. EPIC has a field of view (FOV) of 0.62 degrees, sufficient to image the entire Earth. Because of DSCOVR's tilted (Lissajous) orbit about the L‐1 point, the apparent angular size of the Earth varies from 0.45 to 0.53 degrees within its 6-month orbital period. Depending on the season, a complete set of per-band images is taken every 60 to 100 minutes.Accompanying instrument metadata and a series of calibrations and corrections are applied to convert the images to Level 1A format properly. The significant corrections are for flat‐fielding and stray light. Flat-fielding is based on measurements with a uniform light source to measure the differences in sensitivity for each of the 4 million pixels. The resulting correction map is applied to the measured counts from the CCD. Stray light was measured in the laboratory using a series of small-diameter light sources entering the telescope and imaged on the CCD. A similar set of measurements has been performed on orbit using the moon. The illumination of pixels outside the primary diameter of the light source was measured to produce a detailed matrix map of the entire stray light function, and the resulting stray light correction was applied to every image. Other corrections are also used based on laboratory measurements. For wavelengths longer than 550 nm, there are back-to-front interference effects in the partially transparent CCD (etaloning) that must also be removed from the measured radiances.The Level 1A products contain calibrated EPIC images with ancillary metadata and geolocation information. These data products are in HDF5 format.

DSCOVR_EPIC_L3_PAR_01 is the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) Level 3 photosynthetically available radiation (PAR) version 1 data product. The EPIC observations of the Earth’s surface lit by the Sun made 13 times during the day in spectral bands centered on 443, 551, and 680 nm are used to estimate daily mean PAR at the ice-free ocean surface. PAR is defined as the quantum energy flux from the Sun in the 400-700 nm range. Daily mean PAR is the 24-hour averaged planar flux in that spectral range reaching the surface. It is expressed in E.m-2.d-1 (Einstein per meter squared per day). The factor required to convert E.m-2 d-1 units to mW.cm-2.µm-1 units are equal to 0.838 to an inaccuracy of a few percent regardless of meteorological conditions. The EPIC daily mean PAR product is generated on Plate Carrée (equal-angle) grid with an 18.4 km resolution at the equator and on an 18.4 km equal-area grid, i.e., the product is compatible with Ocean Biology Processing Group ocean color products.The EPIC PAR algorithm uses a budget approach, in which the solar irradiance reaching the surface is obtained by subtracting from the irradiance arriving at the top of the atmosphere (known), the irradiance reflected space (estimated from the EPIC Level 1b radiance data), taking into account atmospheric transmission (modeled). Clear and cloudy regions within a pixel do not need to be distinguished. This dismisses the need for often-arbitrary assumptions about cloudiness distribution and is therefore adapted to the relatively large EPIC pixels. A daily mean PAR is estimated on the source grid for each EPIC instantaneous daytime observation, assuming no cloudiness changes during the day, and the individual estimates are remapped and weight-averaged using the cosine of the Sun zenith angle. In the computations, wind speed, surface pressure, and water vapor amount are extracted from NCEP (National Centers for Environmental Prediction) Reanalysis 2 data, aerosol optical thickness, and angstrom coefficient from MERRA-2 (Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2) data, and ozone amount from EPIC Level 2 data. Areas contaminated by sun glint are excluded using a threshold on sun glint reflectance calculated using wind data. Ice masking is based on NSIDC (National Snow and Ice Data Center) near real-time ice fraction data. Additional information about the EPIC ocean surface PAR products can be found at the NASA DSCOVR: EPIC website: https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/, under “Science -> Products -> Ocean Surface” (https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/products/ocean).

DSCOVR_EPIC_L3_PAR-image_01 is a view image showing data from DSCOVR_EPIC_L3_PAR, which is the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) Level 3 photosynthetically available radiation (PAR) version 1 data product. The EPIC observations of the Earth’s surface lit by the Sun made 13 times during the day in spectral bands centered on 443, 551, and 680 nm are used to estimate daily mean PAR at the ice-free ocean surface. PAR is defined as the quantum energy flux from the Sun in the 400-700 nm range. Daily mean PAR is the 24-hour averaged planar flux in that spectral range reaching the surface. It is expressed in E.m-2.d-1 (Einstein per meter squared per day). The factor required to convert E.m-2 d-1 units to mW.cm-2.µm-1 units are equal to 0.838 to an inaccuracy of a few percent regardless of meteorological conditions. The EPIC daily mean PAR product is generated on Plate Carrée (equal-angle) grid with an 18.4 km resolution at the equator and on an 18.4 km equal-area grid, i.e., the product is compatible with Ocean Biology Processing Group ocean color products.The EPIC PAR algorithm uses a budget approach, in which the solar irradiance reaching the surface is obtained by subtracting from the irradiance arriving at the top of the atmosphere (known), the irradiance reflected space (estimated from the EPIC Level 1b radiance data), taking into account atmospheric transmission (modeled). Clear and cloudy regions within a pixel do not need to be distinguished. This dismisses the need for often-arbitrary assumptions about cloudiness distribution and is therefore adapted to the relatively large EPIC pixels. A daily mean PAR is estimated on the source grid for each EPIC instantaneous daytime observation, assuming no cloudiness changes during the day, and the individual estimates are remapped and weight-averaged using the cosine of the Sun zenith angle. In the computations, wind speed, surface pressure, and water vapor amount are extracted from NCEP (National Centers for Environmental Prediction) Reanalysis 2 data, aerosol optical thickness, and angstrom coefficient from MERRA-2 (Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2) data, and ozone amount from EPIC Level 2 data. Areas contaminated by sun glint are excluded using a threshold on sun glint reflectance calculated using wind data. Ice masking is based on NSIDC (National Snow and Ice Data Center) near real-time ice fraction data. Additional information about the EPIC ocean surface PAR products can be found at the NASA DSCOVR: EPIC website: https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/, under “Science -> Products -> Ocean Surface” (https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/products/ocean).