NASA Logo

NTRS

NTRS - NASA Technical Reports Server

Back to Results
Thermal Band Atmospheric Correction Using Atmospheric Profiles Derived from Global Positioning System Radio Occultation and the Atmospheric Infrared SounderThis Rapid Prototyping Capability study explores the potential to use atmospheric profiles derived from GPS (Global Positioning System) radio occultation measurements and by AIRS (Atmospheric Infrared Sounder) onboard the Aqua satellite to improve surface temperature retrieval from remotely sensed thermal imagery. This study demonstrates an example of a cross-cutting decision support technology whereby NASA data or models are shown to improve a wide number of observation systems or models. The ability to use one data source to improve others will be critical to the GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems) where a large number of potentially useful systems will require auxiliary datasets as input for decision support. Atmospheric correction of thermal imagery decouples TOA radiance and separates surface emission from atmospheric emission and absorption. Surface temperature can then be estimated from the surface emission with knowledge of its emissivity. Traditionally, radiosonde sounders or atmospheric models based on radiosonde sounders, such as the NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration) ARL (Air Resources Laboratory) READY (Real-time Environmental Application and Display sYstem), provide the atmospheric profiles required to perform atmospheric correction. Unfortunately, these types of data are too spatially sparse and too infrequently taken. The advent of high accuracy, global coverage, atmospheric data using GPS radio occultation and AIRS may provide a new avenue for filling data input gaps. In this study, AIRS and GPS radio occultation derived atmospheric profiles from the German Aerospace Center CHAMP (CHAllenging Minisatellite Payload), the Argentinean Commission on Space Activities SAC-C (Satellite de Aplicaciones Cientificas-C), and the pair of NASA GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellites are used as input data in atmospheric radiative transport modeling based on the MODTRAN (MODerate resolution atmospheric TRANsmittance) radiative transport software to separate out the atmospheric component of measured top of atmosphere radiance. Simulated water bodies across a variety of MODTRAN model atmospheres including desert, mid-latitude, tropical and sub-artic conditions provide test bed conditions. Atmospherically corrected radiance and surface temperature results were compared to those obtained using traditional radiosonde balloon data and models. In general, differences between the different techniques were less than 2 percent indicating the potential value satellite derived atmospheric profiles have to atmospherically correct thermal imagery.
Document ID
20060056257
Acquisition Source
Stennis Space Center
Document Type
Other
Authors
Pagnutti, Mary
(Science Systems and Applications, Inc. Bay Saint Louis, MS, United States)
Holekamp, Kara
(Science Systems and Applications, Inc. Bay Saint Louis, MS, United States)
Stewart, Randy
(Science Systems and Applications, Inc. Bay Saint Louis, MS, United States)
Vaughan, Ronald D.
(Computer Sciences Corp. Albuquerque, NM, United States)
Date Acquired
August 23, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2006
Subject Category
Earth Resources And Remote Sensing
Report/Patent Number
SSTI-2220-0092
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NNS04AB54T
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

Available Downloads

There are no available downloads for this record.
No Preview Available