Influence of the Solar Spectra Models on PACO Atmospheric Correction

Abstract

The solar irradiance is the source of energy used by passive optical remote sensing to measure the ground reflectance and, from there, derive the ground properties. Therefore, the precise knowledge of the incoming solar irradiance is fundamental for the atmospheric correction (AC) algorithms. These algorithms use the simulation results of a model of the interactions of the atmosphere with the incoming solar irradiance to determine the atmospheric contribution of the remote sensing observations. This study presents the differences in the atmospherically corrected ground reflectance of multi- and hyper-spectral sensors assuming three different solar models: Thuillier 2003, Fontenla 2011 and TSIS-1 HRS. The results show no difference when the solar irradiance model is preserved through the full processing chain. The differences appear when the solar irradiance model used in the atmospheric correction changes, and this difference is larger between some irrradiance models (e.g., TSIS and Thuillier 2003) than for others (e.g., Fontenla 2011 and TSIS).