Atmospheric Effects on the NDVI--Strategies for Its Removal

Authors

Y. J. Kaufman, National Atmospheric and Space Administration, USA
D. Tanré, Université de Sciences et Techniques de Lille
B. N. Holben, National Atmospheric and Space Administration, USA
B. L. Markham, National Atmospheric and Space Administration, USAFollow
Anatoly A. Gitelson, University of Nebraska - LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

1992

Comments

Published in the Proceedings of the Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 1992. IGARSS '92. DOI: 10.1109/IGARSS.1992.578402. Copyright 1992, IEEE. Used by permission. Pages 1,238-1,241.

Abstract

The compositing technique used to derive global vegetation index (NDVI) from the NOAA-AVHRR radiances, reduces the residual effect of water vapor and aerosol on the NDVI. The reduction in the atmospheric effect is shown using a comprehensive measured data set for desert conditions, and a simulation for grass with continental aerosol. A statistical analysis of the probability of occurrence of aerosol optical thickness and precipitable water vapor measured in different climatic regimes is used for this simulation. It is concluded that for a long compositing period (e.g. 27 day), the residual aerosol optical thickness and precipitable water vapor is usually too small to be corrected for. For a 9 day compositing the residual average aerosol effect may be about twice the correction uncertainty. For Landsat-TM or EOS-MODIS data, the newly defined atmospherically resistant vegetation index (ARVI) is more promising than possible direct atmospheric correction schemes, except for heavy desert dust conditions.