ATMOSPHERIC CORRECTION OF VISIBLE TO MIDDLE-INFRARED EOS-MODIS DATA OVER LAND SURFACES - BACKGROUND, OPERATIONAL ALGORITHM AND VALIDATION

The NASA moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrum ent will provide a global and improved source of information for the s tudy of land surfaces with a spatial resolution of up to 250 m. Prior to the derivation of various biophysical parameters based on surface r eflectances, the top of the atmosphere signals need to be radiometrica lly calibrated and corrected for atmospheric effects. The present pape r describes in detail the state of the art techniques that will be use d for atmospheric correction of MODIS bands 1 through 7, centered at 6 48, 858, 470, 555, 1240, 1640, and 2130 nm, respectively. Previous ope rational correction schemes have assumed a standard atmosphere with ze ro or constant aerosol loading and a uniform, Lambertian surface. The MODIS operational atmospheric correction algorithm, reported here, use s aerosol and water vapor information derived from the MODIS data, cor rects for adjacency effects and takes into account the directional pro perties of the observed surface. This paper also describes the operati onal implementation of these techniques and its optimization. The tech niques are applied to remote sensing data from the Landsat Thematic Ma pper (TM), the NOAA advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR), and the MODIS airborne simulator (MAS) and Validated against ground-ba sed measurements from the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET).