Improvement of the thermal emissivity calculated with the vegetation cover method by using optical atmospherically corrected images

In this paper we assess the influence caused by the lack of atmospheric correction of the optical images used to calculate land surface emissivity (LSE). When thermal emissivity is determined by the Vegetation Cover Method (VCM), information from the solar spectrum in order to calculate the vegetation cover fraction is required. The atmospheric correction is performed in this research by using the combination of the Dark Dense Vegetation method (DDV) and the Second Simulation of the Satellite Signal in the Solar Spectrum (6S) code. The methodology was applied to a Landsat TM image of Tomelloso, Spain. It was determined that the emissivity between 10 and 12 mum only increases 0.4% (which represents a systematic error of approximately +0.2 K in temperature) when atmospherically corrected reflectances are used in relation to non-corrected scenes.