Analysis of multispectral fields of satellite IR measurements: Using statistics of second spatial differential of spectral fields for measurement characterization

An approach using spatial analysis of satellite IR spectral measurements for
quality assessment is presented. The second spatial differential is used as a model
of measurement noise for spatially smooth radiative fields. Spatial differentiation
significantly magnifies the noise contribution and reduces the physical signal
amplitude because of differences in spatial distributions of instrument noise and
atmospheric thermal fields. The second spatial differential represents a
convenient and effective tool for numerical analysis of satellite IR measurements.
This paper demonstrates that statistics of the second spatial differential are
informative predictors for data-quality characterization. Statistics of the second
spatial differential are used for identifying anomalies in spectral channel data
caused by detector noise, sensitivity loss to spatial shortwave thermal variations,
and spatially (temporally) correlated noise.