Estimating Atmospheric Effect in Thermal Infrared Remote Sensing Using Single Channel Multiple Viewing Angle Data

An explicit formulation was derived for quantitative estimation of atmospheric effect in thermal infrared remote sensing without any measurements of atmospheric parameters or ground truths. The algorithm calculates atmospheric effect using the single channel double viewing angle thermal infrared data. The atmospheric transmittance and radiance can be explicitly determined from the eigenvector of the covariance matrix of double viewing angle data. The experimental results, using the data acquired with AA3600 airborne multispectral scanner, showed that the maximum error of the estimated sea surface temperature could be reduced to less than 0.6 from about 3 before correction. Since none of the operational orbiting satellites offers the possibility of observing the same scene at different view angle within a short period of time, the algorithm is limited as a atmospheric correction technique for airborne data.