Correction of Thin Cirrus Absorption Effects in Landsat 8 Thermal Infrared Sensor Images Using the Operational Land Imager Cirrus Band on the Same Satellite Platform

Abstract

Data from the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) instruments onboard the Landsat 8 and Landsat 9 satellite platforms are subject to contamination by cloud cover, with cirrus contributions being the most difficult to detect and mask. To help address this issue, a cirrus detection channel (Band 9) centered within the 1.375-μm water vapor absorption region was implemented on OLI, with a spatial resolution of 30 m. However, this band has not yet been fully utilized in the Collection 2 Landsat 8/9 Level 2 surface temperature data products that are publicly released by U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The temperature products are generated with a single-channel algorithm. During the surface temperature retrievals, the effects of absorption of infrared radiation originating from the warmer earth’s surfaces by ice clouds, typically located in the upper portion of the troposphere and re-emitting at much lower temperatures (approximately 220 K), are not taken into consideration. Through an analysis of sample Level 1 TOA and Level 2 surface data products, we have found that thin cirrus cloud features present in the Level 1 1.375-μm band images are directly propagated down to the Level 2 surface data products. The surface temperature errors resulting from thin cirrus contamination can be 10 K or larger. Previously, we reported an empirical and effective technique for removing thin cirrus scattering effects in OLI images, making use of the correlations between the 1.375-μm band image and images of any other OLI bands located in the 0.4–2.5 μm solar spectral region. In this article, we describe a variation of this technique that can be applied to the thermal bands, using the correlations between the Level 1 1.375-μm band image and the 11-μm BT image for the effective removal of thin cirrus absorption effects. Our results from three data sets acquired over spatially uniform water surfaces and over non-uniform land/water boundary areas suggest that if the cirrus-removed TOA 11-μm band BT images are used for the retrieval of the Level 2 surface temperature (ST) data products, the errors resulting from thin cirrus contaminations in the products can be reduced to about 1 K for spatially diffused cirrus scenes.