Determination of land surface reflectance using the AATSR dual-view capability

Abstract

Abstract. In this study, a method is presented to retrieve the surface reflectance using the radiances measured at the top of the atmosphere for the two views provided by the Advanced Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR). In the first step, the aerosol optical depth (AOD) is obtained using the AATSR dual-view algorithm (ADV) by eliminating the effect of the surface on the measured radiances. Hence the AOD is independent of surface properties and can thus be used in the second step to provide the aerosol part of the atmospheric correction which is needed for the surface reflectance retrieval. The method is applied to provide monthly maps of both AOD and surface reflectance at two wavelengths (555 and 659 nm) for the whole year of 2007. The results are validated versus surface reflectance provided by the AERONET-based Surface Reflectance Validation Network (ASRVN). Correlation coefficients are 0.8 and 0.9 for 555 and 659 nm, respectively. The standard deviation is 0.001 for both wavelengths and the absolute error is less than 0.02. Pixel-by-pixel comparison with MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) monthly averaged surface reflectances show a good correlation (0.91 and 0.89 for 555 and 659 nm, respectively) with somewhat higher values (up to 0.05) obtained by ADV over bright surfaces. The difference between the ADV- and MODIS-retrieved surface reflectances is smaller than ±0.025 for 68.3% of the collocated pixels at 555 nm and 79.9% of the collocated pixels at 659 nm. An application of the results over Australia illustrates the variation in the surface reflectances for different land cover types. The validation and comparison results suggest that the algorithm can be successfully used for both the AATSR and ATSR-2 (which has characteristics similar to AATSR) missions, which together cover a 17-year period of measurements (1995–2012), as well as a prototype for the Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR) planned to be launched in the fall of 2015 onboard the Sentinel-3 satellite.