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In-Flight Validation of the ECOSTRESS, Landsats 7 and 8 Thermal Infrared...

Hook, S., K. Cawse-Nicholson, J. Barsi, R. Radocinski, Glynn Hulley, W. Johnson, G. Rivera, and B. Markham (2020), In-Flight Validation of the ECOSTRESS, Landsats 7 and 8 Thermal Infrared Spectral Channels Using the Lake Tahoe CA/NV and Salton Sea CA Automated Validation Sites, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens., 58, 1294-1302, doi:10.1109/TGRS.2019.2945701.
Abstract: 

The ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) was launched on June 29, 2018, to the International Space Station (ISS). Landsats 7 and 8 were launched on April 15, 1999 and February 11, 2013, respectively. The thermal channels of all three instruments have been validated at the Lake Tahoe, CA/NV, USA, and Salton Sea, CA, USA, automated validation sites. These sites have been used to validate a large number of thermal infrared radiometers including ASTER, MODIS, and VIIRS. We have validated 41 cloud-free ECOSTRESS scenes acquired between July 29, 2018 and June 23, 2019; 625 cloud-free Landsat 7 scenes acquired between June 30, 1999 and February 7, 2019; and 375 cloud-free Landsat 8 scenes acquired between March 10, 2013 and February 8, 2019. Validation involved propagating ground measurements to equivalent at-sensor (vicarious) values and comparing them to the measurements obtained from the sensor using its on-board calibration (OBC). The overall correlation between the in situ measurements and at-sensor radiance for the thermal channels from all three instruments was excellent with R 2 of 0.98–0.99 in all the spectral channels. All three instruments were shown to meet or improve on their preflight absolute radiometric accuracy requirement with absolute radiometric values of better than ±1 K at 300 K. All three instruments were also shown to have in-flight noise equivalent delta temperatures which were similar to their preflight values and between 0.1 and 0.3 K depending on the spectral channel.

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Mission: 
ECOSTRESS