Abstract
Combination of different satellite data will provide increased opportunities for more frequent cloud-free surface observations due to variable cloud cover at the different satellite overpass times and dates. Satellite data from the polar-orbiting Landsat-8 (launched 2013), Sentinel-2A (launched 2015) and Sentinel-2B (launched 2017) sensors offer 10 m to 30 m multi-spectral global coverage. Together, they advance the virtual constellation paradigm for mid-resolution land imaging. In this study, a global analysis of Landsat-8, Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B metadata obtained from the committee on Earth Observation Satellite (CEOS) Visualization Environment (COVE) tool for 2016 is presented. A global equal area projection grid defined every 0.05° is used considering each sensor and combined together. Histograms, maps and global summary statistics of the temporal revisit intervals (minimum, mean, and maximum) and the number of observations are reported. The temporal observation frequency improvements afforded by sensor combination are shown to be significant. In particular, considering Landsat-8, Sentinel-2A, and Sentinel-2B together will provide a global median average revisit interval of 2.9 days, and, over a year, a global median minimum revisit interval of 14 min (±1 min) and maximum revisit interval of 7.0 days.
Highlights
It is well established that combination of different optical wavelength satellite data provide increased opportunities for cloud-free surface observation [1,2,3,4]
The most frequent annual number of observations is the same as the median number for the single sensors and occurs for 47.9%, 35.9% and 36.3% of the globe for Landsat-8, Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B respectively
The analysis considered a global year of modeled sensor data and demonstrated that combination of Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 generally increases the number of observations and reduces the revisit interval
Summary
It is well established that combination of different optical wavelength satellite data provide increased opportunities for cloud-free surface observation [1,2,3,4]. When remote sensing satellite orbits are designed, the satellite coverage may be considered in several ways including the number of observations in a given period and the revisit interval [7,8,9]. Researchers have examined the number of observations in different periods for Landsat [10,11,12,13] and Sentinel-2 [14]. The revisit interval, i.e., the time period between consecutive observations of a surface location, has not been studied but is of considerable interest for terrestrial applications. Landsat and Sentinel-2A data have been shown to Remote Sens. 2017, 9, 902; doi:10.3390/rs9090902 www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing
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