Optical Radiometry and Satellite Validation

Strict quality control is essential to ensure that the satellite data products routinely used for environmental monitoring of water and land surfaces are fit for purpose. A crucial step in this process is the validation of the water and land surface reflectances, from which the final end-user products are derived. The topic of radiometric validation is growing rapidly in importance both because of the advent of operational satellite missions for routine environmental monitoring and because of the rapid expansion in the number of satellite missions, including CubeSat constellations with limited cal/val resources. This enhanced need for radiometric validation data covering a wide VIS/NIR/SWIR range (e.g. 380-2400nm), preferably with a hyperspectral resolution, must be met by new techniques and hardware, particularly ground-based automated radiometry.

This Research Topic will gather the latest ideas on the topic of “optical radiometry and satellite validation”. It is likely to become a major reference in this topic including key papers, e.g. regarding the design and implementation of new ground-based hyperspectral radiometer systems for measurement of water and land surface reflectance and their application for satellite validation, including the HYPERNETS network baseline paper.

This article collection welcomes contributions on the following topics covering:

• In situ measurement of water and/or land surface reflectance;

• Calibration and Validation of optical imaging satellites, including CubeSats;

• In situ optical instrumentation (radiometers, cameras, sun photometers, polarimeters, lidar, etc.);

• Automated measurement systems for remote locations;

• Angular variability of water and/or land surface reflectance (BRDF/HDRF);

• In situ measurement data processing, quality control, and uncertainty estimation;

• Ground-based measurements of atmospheric optical properties.