Abstract
In order to extract quantitative water‐leaving information from the Thematic Mapper (TM) image accurately in inland waters, atmospheric correction is a necessary step. Based on former researchers' results, the paper presents two atmospheric correction algorithms based on meteorological data (MD) and on Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Vicarious Calibration (MVC) for TM image in inland waters according to the theory of radiative transfer. Studying Taihu lake, China, in this paper we derived water remote sensing reflectance from a TM image of 26 July 2004 by these two atmospheric correction algorithms and we compare the results with that of dark object subtraction (DOS) and 6S code. The results show that the effect of atmospheric correction based on meteorological data and MODIS Vicarious Calibration is much better than that of DOS and 6S code. Although the MD is more accurate, MVC may be an ideal choice for TM images in inland water because TERRA MODIS images can be acquired easily than collecting meteorological data at the time of satellites passing over.
Acknowledgement
The authors are very grateful to two anonymous referees for their helpful advice, Dr Zheng Wei at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the MODIS satellite receiving station of Wuhan University, China for providing TERRA MODIS imagery that was used in this paper. National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 40571110) and the Foundation of Graduate Innovation Training Plan of Nanjing Normal University (no. 1612005023) supported the project financially.