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Auteurs principaux: Kay, Sarah E., Wenny, Brian N.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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Accès en ligne:https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.20248
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author Kay, Sarah E.
Wenny, Brian N.
author_facet Kay, Sarah E.
Wenny, Brian N.
contents Underflight maneuvers provide a unique opportunity to harmonize calibration of on-orbit sensors. Due to their similar sensor technologies, their near-identical transmission profiles, orbital properties and platform operations, the underflight data of Landsat 8 and 9 instruments stand out as a qualifier to test proposed metrics, methods, and the extent over which to compare two independently calibrated sensors across their similar operating bandpasses. This study performed a pixel-to-pixel comparison of thermal imagery of TIRS and TIRS-2 (aboard Landsat 8 and 9, respectively) during their five-day underflight maneuver in November 2021, with the ultimate goal of identifying the key site/scene-selection criteria for a subset of images that are suitable for radiative calibration validation purposes. If a group of near-coincidentally observed images by two identical underflying sensors fail to show consistent Top-of-Atmosphere (TOA) Brightness Temperatures for the same exact geographical locations, then the scenes with those shared properties and/or observing conditions will prove unreliable for cross calibration validation of less-similar underflying sensor pairs. This study demonstrates that near-coincidental images with Root Mean Square Deviations (RMSDs) of less than 5\% between their TOA radiances are optimum candidates for cross-validation of radiative calibration between two independently calibrated sensors. This criterion is shown to be reliable for coincidental acquisitions with a wide range of overlapping area, terrain type, land-to-water fraction and cloud coverage. Important considerations include any time gap between near-coincident acquisitions as well as the application of pixel quality masks. The analysis of the selected underflight scenes demonstrated an agreement between the TIRS on Landsat 8 and 9 to within 0.123 K and 0.066 K for the 10.9um and 12.0um bands respectively.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_20248
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Satellite Underflight Utility for Thermal Sensor Harmonization
Kay, Sarah E.
Wenny, Brian N.
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Underflight maneuvers provide a unique opportunity to harmonize calibration of on-orbit sensors. Due to their similar sensor technologies, their near-identical transmission profiles, orbital properties and platform operations, the underflight data of Landsat 8 and 9 instruments stand out as a qualifier to test proposed metrics, methods, and the extent over which to compare two independently calibrated sensors across their similar operating bandpasses. This study performed a pixel-to-pixel comparison of thermal imagery of TIRS and TIRS-2 (aboard Landsat 8 and 9, respectively) during their five-day underflight maneuver in November 2021, with the ultimate goal of identifying the key site/scene-selection criteria for a subset of images that are suitable for radiative calibration validation purposes. If a group of near-coincidentally observed images by two identical underflying sensors fail to show consistent Top-of-Atmosphere (TOA) Brightness Temperatures for the same exact geographical locations, then the scenes with those shared properties and/or observing conditions will prove unreliable for cross calibration validation of less-similar underflying sensor pairs. This study demonstrates that near-coincidental images with Root Mean Square Deviations (RMSDs) of less than 5\% between their TOA radiances are optimum candidates for cross-validation of radiative calibration between two independently calibrated sensors. This criterion is shown to be reliable for coincidental acquisitions with a wide range of overlapping area, terrain type, land-to-water fraction and cloud coverage. Important considerations include any time gap between near-coincident acquisitions as well as the application of pixel quality masks. The analysis of the selected underflight scenes demonstrated an agreement between the TIRS on Landsat 8 and 9 to within 0.123 K and 0.066 K for the 10.9um and 12.0um bands respectively.
title Satellite Underflight Utility for Thermal Sensor Harmonization
topic Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.20248