Vicarious Cross-Calibration of the China Environment Satellite Using Nearly Simultaneously Observations of Landsat-7 ETM+ Sensor

Abstract

To understand the absolute radiometric calibration accuracy of the HJ-A CCD-1 sensors, image from these sensors were compared to nearly simultaneously image from Landsat-7 ETM+ sensors. Although the HJ-A CCD-1 sensor has almost the same wavelength of each central band and band width as Landsat-7 ETM+ sensor, there is slightly difference in spectral response function (SRF). The impacts of SRF difference effects would produce ~2 % uncertainty in predicting reflectance of HJ-A CCD-1 sensor using Landsat-7 ETM+ sensor. The reflectance observed by satellite at top-of-atmosphere generally depends on its’ geometric conditions. The results reveal that the impacts of geometrical conditions would impact on the vicarious cross-calibration accuracy, which should be removed. The performances of cross-calibration are calibrated and validated by four image pairs collected from Yellow River Delta, China, and Qingdao City, China, at four independent times. The results indicate that the HJ-A CCD-1 sensors can be cross calibrated to the Landsat-7 ETM+ sensors to within an accuracy of 3.99 % (denoted by Relative Root Mean Square Error) of each other in all bands except band 4, which has a 6.33 % difference.