• Corpus ID: 130932366

Identification of Subresolution High Temperature Sources Using a Thermal IR Sensor

@inproceedings{Matson1981IdentificationOS,
  title={Identification of Subresolution High Temperature Sources Using a Thermal IR Sensor},
  author={Michael Matson and Jeff Dozier},
  year={1981}
}

• M. Matson, J. Dozier
• Published 1981
• Environmental Science

Simultaneous use of the 3.8-pm and 11-pm thermal infrared channels on board the 3rd-generation NOAA-6 environmental satellite provides the capability to detect subresolution scale high-temperature sources, and to estimate both the temperature and size of such sources. Examples resented include gas flares from oil fields in the Middle East and steel mills in the midwestern United States. channels is 1.1 km at the satellite subpoint, and the minimum noise-equivalent differential temperature (NEAT) is 0.12 K for 300-K scene (Schwalb, 1979). Calibration is provided on board for converting the satellite-measured thermal energy emitted by the Earth and its atmosphere into brightness temperatures. Unless these temperatures are corrected for land-surface emissivity, as well as for absorption and re-emission in the intervening atmosphere, they cannot be compared strictly with Earth surface thermodynamic temperatures. Although designed for sea surface temperature PHOTOCRAMMETRIC NGINEERING A D REMOTE S NSING, Vol. 47, No. 9, September 1981, pp. 1311-1318. ness temperature. A typical brightness temperature difference between the two channels, 1 to 1.5 K, is shown by the rest of the plot and is caused primarily by less water vapor attenuation in the 3.8-pm channel (Weinreb and Hill, 1980). The purposes of this paper are to (1) present the radiance-temperature relations that explain the different responses of the two thermal-IR channels to a common target; (2) demonstrate how the different responses of the two channels can be used to determine both the brightness temperature of the source causing the two-channel difference and the area of the pixel (picture element) covered by 0099-1 112/81/4709-1311$02.25/0 @ 1981 American Society of Photogrammetry PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING, 1981 TABLE 1. NOAA-6 AVHRR SPECTRAL CHANNELS Channel Spectral Interval 1 0.55-0.68 pm 2 0.725-1.10 pm 3 3.55-3.93 pm 4 10.5-11.5 pm the source; and (3) identify the physical sources responsible for the high temperature response in the 3.8-pm channel.