Land surface temperature (LST) is a crucial variable in the Earth’s surface system, playing a key role in understanding the exchanges of material and energy between the surface and the atmosphere. Hyperspectral thermal infrared (TIR) data provide new opportunities for developing methods to retrieve LST from satellite observations. However, the typical physical hyperspectral TIR LST retrieval methods are limited by their reliance on accurate atmospheric correction and specific assumptions, which would introduce complexity and reduce applicability. To address these challenges, this study presents a novel LST retrieval framework that combines a Deep Residual Regression Network (DR2N) with the Iterative Spectrally Smooth Temperature and Emissivity Separation (ISSTES) algorithm, refined by Hampel filtering. In this framework, DR2N is trained on simulated data to efficiently retrieve atmospheric parameters, including upwelling radiance, downwelling radiance and transmissivity, and after that the refined ISSTES algorithm is applied to simulated data covering various surface types, yielding an overall RMSE of 1.89 K and a bias of -0.19 K. Subsequently, to further verify the performance of the proposed algorithm, LSTs over four study areas-Spain, North Africa, Hulunbuir, and the Yellow Sea are retrieved, and are compared with IASI L2 surface temperature products originating from the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), showing an RMSE of 0.51 K and a bias of -0.25 K. This confirms the efficacy of the proposed LST retrieval approach.

The surface reflectance product is the most crucial and fundamental quantitative product in optical remote sensing, serving as the source for various land surface parameter products. This study initially conducts the retrieval of aerosol optical depth (AOD) from GF1/WFV data. The 6SV model, combined with dark object method and histogram matching, is utilized to achieve AOD inversion at a 16-meter resolution on a per-pixel basis. Subsequently, atmospheric correction is performed using the radiative transfer equation to obtain surface reflectance. The culmination of our efforts involved a comprehensive quantification of uncertainties throughout the production process of the proposed surface reflectance product, allowing for a robust assessment of its reliability, accuracy, and applicability. A thorough evaluation was conducted to ascertain the efficacy and potential of the proposed methodology.

The advanced hyperspectral imager (AHSI) is one of the sensors aboard the Chinese Gaofen-5 (GF-5) satellite, possessing characteristics of high spatial and spectral resolution, as well as width swath. To better understand the radiometric performance of GF-5/AHIS after its launch, this article presents an on-orbit radiometric calibration approach for AHSI visible and near-infrared (VNIR) and shortwave infrared (SWIR) sensors from field automatic observations with a field spectrometer in the absence of SWIR measurements. A spectrum extension method was proposed to extend the retrieved surface hyperspectral reflectance in the VNIR spectral ranges to SWIR by incorporating the historical hyperspectral reflectance library. The radiometric calibration coefficients of GF-5/AHSI were calculated by linear fitting of the observed digital number (DN) values with GF-5/AHSI and predicted at-sensor radiances with MODTRAN 5 based on extended hyperspectral surface reflectance. Comparisons with onboard calibration results were also performed, and the averaged relative differences were within 5% with$1\delta $standard deviations less than 10% for most bands, except for those in the atmospheric absorption and low signal-to-noise ratio bands. The comparison results indicate that the on-site radiometric calibration results are consistent with the onboard results, and the operational on-orbit radiometric calibration approach is reliable in the case that there are no measurements in the SWIR spectra range. The on-orbit radiometric performance of GF-5/AHSI rapidly degraded during the first several months after its launch and then tended to be relatively stable.

When using a field calibration site to perform in-orbit radiometric calibration of a space-borne remote sensor, the measured signal by the sensor may contain radiation from adjacent pixels, due to scattering in the Earth’s atmosphere and the sensor viewing characteristics. If this is not accounted for in the modeling, the accuracy of the radiometric calibration will be reduced. Nonuniformities of the ground target are more significant for the calibration of high-resolution sensors. In addition, if the brightness contrast of neighboring targets is not small, the impact of the adjacency effects will be more significant. It is important to quantitatively analyze and estimate the influence of this kind of adjacency effects, to reduce the uncertainty of in-orbit radiometric calibration. To evaluate the adjacency effects caused by atmospheric multiple scattering, this article constructed a local atmospheric point spread function model using long time-series satellite-ground synchronous observation data and developed an adjacency effects simulation method, which considers background reflectance spectral information. Tests on Sentinel-2A and Worldview-3 imagery overpassing the Baotou calibration and validation site (Baotou C&V site) (China) indicate that the proposed modeling method can effectively account for the influence of the adjacency effects in vicarious calibration. Uncertainties of relevant parameters and their contributions to the calibration result were also analyzed, and uncertainty assessment results show that the vicarious radiometric calibration scheme considering adjacency effects correction can bring about a total uncertainty less than 7%.

This paper presents a series of temporal vicarious radiometric calibration results of ZY3-MUX sensor over 2016–2019 using the reflectance-based approach. The synchronous ground measuring data have been collected from Baotou sandy site in China given that its high-frequency standard product including surface reflectance and atmospheric parameters. The results show the average difference of radiometric calibration coefficients between calculated results and the official coefficients in each year of ZY3-MUX sensor are 4.6%, 4.6%, 0.64%, 6.28%, respectively. The long-term stability of the radiometric calibration using the data of four years shows a good consistent, and the average difference is 0.92%, 0.64%, 0.50% and 0.65% for ZY3-MUX sensor, respectively. In addition, uncertainty analysis shows that the overall uncertainty for ZY3-MUX radiometric calibration is 4.42%, 4.44%, 4.66% and 3.92%, which also confirms the credibility for radiation quality of Baotou sandy site.

The Chinese Gaofen-1(GF-1) high resolution satellite loaded with four Wide Field of View (WFV) cameras provides observations with high temporal and spatial resolutions. However, the radiometric calibration accuracy of the GF1/WFV should be given when being used to monitoring the earth. In this study, radiometric calibration of the GF1/WFV was carried out first with automatic instrumented Baotou site. Then, the determined radiometric calibration coefficients were cross validated with the MultiSpectral Imager (MSI) onboard the Sentinel-2 satellite. The preliminary results show that the radiometric performances of the four WFV cameras are relatively stable with averaged relative difference less than -1.85%. The standard deviation of the radiometric calibration coefficients during the period from April 2019 to June 2020 is 0.0056, 0.0081, 0.0072, and 0.0076 with respect to the blue, green, red, and near infrared channel. The results of cross validation with Sentinel-2/MSI suggest that the averaged relative difference is -3.16%, -4.28%, -1.15%, and -3.22% with respect to the blue, green, red, and near infrared channel. The results of cross-validation demonstrate that radiometric calibration of the GF-1/WFV cameras using automatic instrumented Baotou site is feasible and operational. And, it is also essential and necessary to update the on-orbit radiometric calibration coefficients of GF-1/WFV cameras during its' entire lifetime for further quantitative application.

The Radiometric Calibration Network (RadCalNet) provide SI-traceable Top-of-Atmosphere (TOA) spectrally-resolved reflectance for automated radiometric calibration of optical satellite sensors. Each RadCalNet site is equipped with automated ground instrumentation in order to provide continuous measurements of both surface reflectance and local environmental/atmospheric conditions needed for the derivation of TOA reflectance values. It is very valuable to use these data in calibrating and motoring optical satellite sensors with the recent launches of very large number of satellites. The work presented here shows the results of vicarious calibration of SuperView-1 satellite sensor using RadCalNet TOA reflectance product. The results also indicated that there was a good consistency among the vicarious calibration coefficients from different RadCalNet sites.

Directional reflectance of Baotou sandy calibration site was measured in September 2017. Directional reflectance factors were collected using the Multi-Angles Observation System (MAOS) designed by Academy of Opto-Electronics (AOE), Chinese Academy of Sciences. The directional reflectance was measured at a few viewing and azimuth angles in the 0-30° and 0-360° angular ranges, respectively. Anisotropy and directional effect of surface reflectance were analyzed based on the measured directional reflectance factors. The bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) model of the calibration site was also modelled, and the model fitting error was approximated to be within 2%. The BRDF model was also used to correct angular difference between ground measurements and satellite measurements in vicarious radiometric calibration carried out in Baotou sandy calibration site, and calibration results with and without angular correction were shown in this work.

This paper describes a four-component parameterized directional thermal radiance model for row crops, which consists of the thermal radiance of the sunlit/shaded soil and sunlit/shaded leaf, multiple scattering effects of canopy and sensor field of view. The light transmission process of the row crops canopy has been full depicted and the accuracy and sensitivity of the proposed model are discussed in detail. Finally, compared with the FRA97 and FovMod models, the results show that the root mean square error(RMSE) is 0.18K and 0.36K, respectively.

When using field calibration site to perform on-orbit radiometric calibration for a space-borne remote sensor, the observed signal of the sensor may contain energy from adjacent pixels, due to existence of the earth atmosphere and sensor viewing characteristics. Hence the accuracy of radiometric calibration will be decreased to some extent. When calibration of high-resolution sensor is concerned, the non-uniformity of the ground target will be relatively more obvious. In addition, if the brightness contrast of neighboring targets is not small, the impact of adjacency effect will be more outstanding. How to quantitatively analyze and eliminate the influence of this kind of adjacency effect, becomes an actual demand to reduce the uncertainty of on-orbit radiometric calibration. Aiming at the adjacent effect caused by atmospheric multiple scattering, this paper analyzed radiation transfer mechanism first, then constructed a local atmospheric point spread function model using long time-series satellite-ground synchronous observation data, developed an adjacency effect correction method used in on-orbit vicarious calibration, which considers background reflectance spectral information. Test on Sentinel-2A imagery indicates that the proposed correction method can effectively alleviate the influence of adjacency effect in vicarious calibration.