Correction of thermal imagery for atmospheric effects using aircraft measurement and atmospheric modeling techniques
Abstract
Airborne measurements of atmospheric-path transmission and atmospheric-path (upwelled) radiance in the
8-14-gm band were obtained by applying a multiple altitude and a dual-view angle calibration technique to
thermal IR line scanner data. A spectrally corrected LOWTRAN code was used to generate path transmission
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surface temperatures within 0.7 0C of concurrent kinetic temperature readings. The angular calibration
method results in similar computed surface temperature errors for 304.8-m (1000-ft) altitude data and
increasing by l.20C/304.8-m up to a 1828.8-m (6000-ft) altitude. This paper contains results of a comparative
analysis of these approaches for atmospheric calibration.