Temporal influences on Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper image in visible band

The Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) has provided fine spatial resolution data spanning two decades. These data are useful for long-term studies of environmental change. However, temporal factors such as sensor degradation, variation in Sun-target-satellite geometry, and variable atmospheric conditions can create inconsistencies in multi-temporal images and complicate data analysis. This study investigated temporal influences on satellite data. The methodology was developed based on a theoretically derived relationship between pixel values of pseudo-invariant features (PIFs) across time. The relationship was validated using multi-temporal Landsat-5 TM images, which showed that temporal factors contribute to PIF pixel values in both multiplicative and additive ways. For Landsat-5 TM level-0 data, temporal influences were simulated in terms of multiplicative and additive components. The results showed that atmospheric variation is the most influential factor, followed by variation in the Sun-target-satellite geometry and TM sensor degradation.