New Methodology for an Improved Thermal Calibration of Landsat 5 through Fusion of Environmental Data Sources

This work is motivated by the need for a complete thermal calibration record of the Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) thermal band (band 6). It is through fusion of environmental data sources (i.e. buoy observations, surface observations and radiosonde observations) that a vicarious calibration approach will be implemented to construct the complete calibration record. Initial results from a limited data set indicate that a potential temperature bias may exist over time. This analysis, however, is ongoing. Future work will include an expansion to the current data set, data filters to account for high atmospheric moisture and volcanic aerosol contamination, as well as, an error propagation study to establish the appropriate level of confidence regarding the final calibration results.