Atmospheric correction of HJ-1A/B CCD images over Chinese coastal waters using MODIS-Terra aerosol data

This paper demonstrates an atmospheric correction method to process HJ-1A/B CCD images over Chinese coastal waters with the aid of MODIS-Terra aerosol information. Based on the assumption of zero water-leaving radiance at the two near-infrared (NIR) bands or the shortwave infrared (SWIR) bands, the atmospheric aerosol optical depth (ACID) is firstly retrieved from MODIS-Terra with a simple extension of the NIR-SWIR combined atmospheric correction approach embedded in SeaDAS (SeaWiFS data analysis system). Then the "turbid" and "non-turbid" waters are separated by the turbid water index. Maximum probability of AOD at 551 nm band is derived based on the NIR information over "non-turbid" waters and FLAASH model is selected to do the atmospheric correction of the HJ-1A/B CCD imagery using the AOD values of highest probabilities as input. Similarly, according to the histogram of the AOD distribution at 551 nm band, the studied turbid water area is divided into several blocks and HJ-1A/B CCD imagery is corrected with the corresponding AOD values displayed with the highest frequency in each block. This method has been applied to several Hi-1A/B images over Chinese coastal waters and validated by synchronous in-situ data. The results have shown that this method is effective in the atmospheric correction process of HJ-1A/B CCD images for ocean color remote sensing study and application in the coastal waters.