Abstract
Radiometric calibration of the Landsat-8 operational land imager (OLI) sensor is a key step that enables additional quantitative research and application of the data. This study introduces a ground reflected radiance-based approach to vicarious radiometric validate the Landsat-8 OLI onboard radiometric calibration results. Vicarious radiometric calibration/validation field campaign of the Landsat-8 OLI sensor was carried out at the Baotou site in Inner Mongolia, China, on March 27, 2015, October 28, 2015, March 29, 2016, and April 21, 2016. The relative errors of the OLI bands are within 5% for the ground reflected radiance-based approach when compared with satellite observations of top of atmosphere (TOA) radiance in the OLI bands, and the average 1σ standard deviation of the four results using the vicarious radiometric calibration is less than 0.025. A well-calibrated Terra MODIS sensor was used to cross-validate the Landsat-8 OLI sensor, and the relative errors are within 10%. The results suggest that the OLI onboard the Landsat-8 satellite displays stable radiometric performance for the four calibration/validation days. An uncertainty analysis of the ground reflected radiance-based approach showed an overall uncertainty of less than 4.5%, taking into account uncertainty sources, including surface characteristics, atmospheric characteristics, radiative transfer, solar irradiance, and the calibration model.
Highlights
Eight Landsat series satellites, including Landsat-1 to Landsat-8, have been launched since the first Landsat satellite launched successfully on July 23, 1972
Where predicted stands for the operational land imager (OLI) band top of atmosphere (TOA) radiance predicted with the ground reflected radiance-based approach, based on the ground measurements at the time when the Landsat-8 satellite passed over our calibration site, and observed stands for the OLI band TOA radiance calculated with the radiometric calibration coefficients provided with the Landsat/OLI data
The relative differences between the predicted and observed OLI band TOA radiance values are less than 5%, and the mean relative differences for the eight channels are less than 2% on March 27, 2015, and March 29, 2016
Summary
Eight Landsat series satellites, including Landsat-1 to Landsat-8, have been launched since the first Landsat satellite launched successfully on July 23, 1972. Landsat-8, which was launched on February 11, 2013, is the latest satellite in the Landsat series.[1] Images with 30-m spatial resolution have been acquired since Landsat-4 was launched in 1984. The Landsat-4 to Landsat-8 satellite orbital repeating cycle is every 16 days. The repeating cycle of Landsat 1 to 3 sensors was every 18 days. Unlike prior Landsat instruments in which the visible and near-infrared (VNIR) and thermal images were acquired with the same sensor, there are two instruments onboard the Landsat-8 platform. These instruments are the operational land imager (OLI), which has nine VNIR multispectral channels covering a spectral range of 0.4 to 2.5 μm, and the thermal infrared sensor, which has two thermal channels that cover a spectral
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