Radiometric assessment of OLCI, VIIRS, and MODIS using Fiducial Reference Measurements along the Atlantic Meridional Transect
Ocean Acidification (OA) parameters can be accurately derived from satellite data to provide high spatial and temporal synoptic coverage of the status of OA in the world’s oceans. Ocean colour is often chosen as an input parameter to derive OA, and there is a requirement to select the most accurate ocean colour product. To this end, high quality independent ground measurements that are traceable to metrology standards, with a full uncertainty budget, are required for validation over the lifetime of ocean-colour satellite missions. Normalised water leaving radiance in situ data collected to Fiducial Reference Measurement standards during four Atlantic Meridional Transect (AMT) field campaigns from 2016 to 2019 were used to assess the performance of radiometric products from the Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) aboard Sentinel-3A and 3B, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument aboard Aqua (MODIS-Aqua), and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite instrument aboard Suomi NPP and NOAA-20 (Suomi-VIIRS and NOAA-20 VIIRS) using an uncertainty threshold for the in situ data. Three atmospheric correction models were compared for Sentinel-3A and 3B OLCI: OLCI IPF-OL-2, POLYMER and NASA SeaDAS l2gen and POLYMER showed the best performance. The Sentinel-3A and 3B OLCI instruments were also compared during their tandem phase, which showed that S-3B OLCI radiances were systematically higher than S-3A OLCI across the spectrum.
This publication is resulted from the SOLAS endorsed project "AMT4CO2Flux - Atlantic Meridional Transect Ocean Flux from Satellite Campaign".
Reference: Pardo, S., Tilstone, G. H., Brewin, R. J.W., et al. (2023). Radiometric assessment of OLCI, VIIRS, and MODIS using Fiducial Reference Measurements along the Atlantic Meridional Transect. Remote Sens. Env., 299: 113844. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2023.113844
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