The purpose of calibration is to enable the calculation of the actual radiance of the Earth target, from the corresponding digital counts produced by the satellite instrument. Different calibration methods (temperature/radiance tables) have been used for the Meteosat satellite series, Meteosat First Generation (MFG) and Meteosat Second Generation (MSG), to convert the radiances into brightness temperatures. Quantitative application of satellite observations requires the absolute calibration of the observed raw radiance data. Calibration techniques of the thermal channels of the meteorological satellites rely on on-board calibration employing a black body, or on vicarious techniques.

Calibration
MFG Calibration Calibration information relevant to the MFG (Meteosat First Generation) programme, including IR/WV channel calibration methods, coefficients and historial calibration details.	MSG Calibration Calibration information relevant to the MSG (Meteosat Second Generation) programme, including IR/WV channel calibration methods, SEVIRI solar channel coefficients, as well as pre- and post-launch calibration details.
Inter-calibration By using inter-calibration methods a reference instrument, with well-known calibration characteristics, is compared with collocated observations from another instrument, to derive calibration corrections for the latter, helping ensure consistency between the products of the different instruments.