An Accurate and Automated Approach to Georectification of HDF-EOS Swath Data

Abstract

HDF-EOS is the standard format for NASA’s EOS data products. Data stored in the HDF-EOS swath structure are in a raw sensor coordinate system and are not rectified to a map projection or geographic coordinate system. The geolocation information is stored as separate fields in a swath. Swath data have to be georectified before they can be integrated and analyzed. Presently, no general purpose remote sensing image processing or geographic information system software has the capability to directly perform georectification of HDF-EOS swath data by using the geolocation information in the file. Most software cannot even import such data due to the relevant newness of the format, and this has limited the public use of NASA EOS data products. This paper describes algorithms that automatically georectify the swath data by using the geolocation information in the swath. The algorithms have been implemented in a software package which is freely available to data users.