RETRIEVAL OF ATMOSPHERIC OPTICAL-PARAMETERS FROM AIRBORNE FLUX MEASUREMENTS - APPLICATION TO THE ATMOSPHERIC CORRECTION OF IMAGERY

Methodologies that employ auxilliary flux data collected by upward- an d downward-looking optical sensors to improve atmospheric corrections of airborne multispectral images are presented and evaluated. Such flu x data often are collected in current airborne sensors to produce bidi rectional reflectance factor (BRF) images and estimates of hemispheric al-hemispherical reflectance. The fact that these images must then be corrected for atmospheric interference raises the question as to wheth er the auxilliary flux information can be employed to estimate some of the input parameters required by atmospheric correction models. Radia tive transfer simulations are employed to demonstrate that the utiliza tion of the downwelling and upwelling fluxes as a means of inferring i ntrinsic atmospheric optical information can be used to better charact erize the local atmosphere and accordingly to improve the atmospheric corrections applied to the apparent BRF images. (C) 1997 Optical Socie ty of America