Atmospheric correction of ASTER

Abstract

An atmospheric correction algorithm for operational use for the high-spatial resolution, Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is presented. The correction is a straightforward approach relying on inputs from other satellite sensors to determine the atmospheric characteristics of the scene to be corrected. Methods for the solar reflective and thermal infrared (TIR) are presented separately. The solar-reflective approach uses a lookup table (LUT) based on output from a Gauss-Seidel iteration radiative transfer code. A method to handle adjacency effects is included that relies on model output, assuming a checkerboard surface. An example of a numerical simulation shows that the effect of a land surface on the radiance over the ocean is stronger just off the coastal zone and decreases exponentially with increasing distance from the land. A typical numerical simulation is performed over the Tsukuba lake area in Japan. The TIR approach relies on the radiative transfer code Moderate Resolution Atmospheric Radiance and Transmittance Model (MODTRAN). The code is run for a given set of atmospheric conditions for multiple locations in the scene for several representative elevations. Pixel-by-pixel radiances are then found using spatial interpolation. Sensitivity analysis of the methods indicate that the results of the atmospheric correction will be limited by the accuracies of the input parameters.