Dual-view Operational Atmospheric Correction for ATSR-2 Imagery

Here we describe a technique to exploit the differential atmospheric paths sampled by ATSR-2 imagery to separate the contributions from atmospheric aerosol and land surface scattering, for the solar reflective channels. The result is an image of the land surface reflectance, relatively uncontaminated by atmospheric scattering, and a separate image of the atmospheric aerosol loading. A general model of land surface bidirectional reflectance is developed and used as a constraint to simultaneously retrieve atmospheric aerosol opacity and bidirectional reflectance from top of atmosphere radiance. The inversion assumes no a priori knowledge of the land surface cover. The technique is demonstrated on a study of smoke aerosol over boreal forest in Canada, observed during May to September 1995. Comparison of the satellite aerosol optical thickness estimates with those derived from a ground network of solar occultation photometers show agreement to within 0.02 at 555nm, over the period. The time series of images shows greatly improved stability of the observed land surface