Landsat-7 ETM+ radiometric stability and absolute calibration

By: , and 
Edited by: Fujisada H.Lurie J.B.Aten M.L.Weber K.

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Abstract

Launched in April 1999, the Landsat-7 ETM+ instrument is in its fourth year of operation. The quality of the acquired calibrated imagery continues to be high, especially with respect to its three most important radiometric performance parameters: reflective band instrument stability to better than ??1%, reflective band absolute calibration to better than ??5%, and thermal band absolute calibration to better than ??0.6 K. The ETM+ instrument has been the most stable of any of the Landsat instruments, in both the reflective and thermal channels. To date, the best on-board calibration source for the reflective bands has been the Full Aperture Solar Calibrator, which has indicated changes of at most -1.8% to -2.0% (95% C.I.) change per year in the ETM+ gain (band 4). However, this change is believed to be caused by changes in the solar diffuser panel, as opposed to a change in the instrument's gain. This belief is based partially on ground observations, which bound the changes in gain in band 4 at -0.7% to +1.5%. Also, ETM+ stability is indicated by the monitoring of desert targets. These image-based results for four Saharan and Arabian sites, for a collection of 35 scenes over the three years since launch, bound the gain change at -0.7% to +0.5% in band 4. Thermal calibration from ground observations revealed an offset error of +0.31 W/m 2 sr um soon after launch. This offset was corrected within the U. S. ground processing system at EROS Data Center on 21-Dec-00, and since then, the band 6 on-board calibration has indicated changes of at most +0.02% to +0.04% (95% C.I.) per year. The latest ground observations have detected no remaining offset error with an RMS error of ??0.6 K. The stability and absolute calibration of the Landsat-7 ETM+ sensor make it an ideal candidate to be used as a reference source for radiometric cross-calibrating to other land remote sensing satellite systems.
Publication type Conference Paper
Publication Subtype Conference Paper
Title Landsat-7 ETM+ radiometric stability and absolute calibration
DOI 10.1117/12.462998
Volume 4881
Year Published 2002
Language English
Publisher SPIE
Contributing office(s) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center
Description 11 p.
Larger Work Type Book
Larger Work Subtype Conference publication
Larger Work Title Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
First page 308
Last page 318
Conference Title Sensors, Systems, and Next-Generation Satellites VI
Conference Location Agia Pelagia, Crete, Greece
Conference Date Sep 23-26, 2002
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