Revisiting effectiveness of turbidity index for the switching scheme of NIR-SWIR combined ocean color atmospheric correction algorithm

Huizeng Liu, Shuibo Hu, Qiming Zhou*, Qingquan Li, Guofeng Wu

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

    11 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Accurately removing atmospheric interferences and retrieving water-leaving reflectance are decisive for subsequent ocean color applications. Over turbid waters, the black pixel assumption at the near-infrared (NIR) spectral region does not hold, and shortwave infrared (SWIR)-based atmospheric correction algorithm should be applied. Turbidity index is proposed to detect turbid waters and worked as a criterion for NIR-SWIR combined algorithm. However, studies demonstrated that turbidity index did not work well as expected. This study, using simulated data and satellite images, aimed to revisit the effectiveness of turbidity index for the switching scheme of NIR-SWIR algorithm. The simulated data were obtained from aerosol look-up tables, and the Aqua MODIS images were used. The variations of turbidity index calculated from aerosol reflectance and Rayleigh-corrected reflectance were explored. Results showed that turbidity index did not obey the assumption that it should be close to one over clear waters with negligible NIR water-leaving reflectance; its value calculated from simulated aerosol reflectance ranged from 0.7 to 2.2; and the turbidity index values varied depending on fine-mode fraction, aerosol optical thickness, relative humidity and observing geometries. Therefore, more effective switching scheme should be developed for the NIR-SWIR combined atmospheric correction algorithm.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1-9
    Number of pages9
    JournalInternational Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation
    Volume76
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Apr 2019

    Scopus Subject Areas

    • Global and Planetary Change
    • Earth-Surface Processes
    • Computers in Earth Sciences
    • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

    User-Defined Keywords

    • aerosol lookup tables
    • atmospheric correction
    • NIR-SWIR
    • ocean color remote sensing
    • Turbidity index

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