Novel techniques for the analysis of the TOA radiometric uncertainty

In the framework of the European Copernicus programme, the European Space Agency (ESA) has launched the Sentinel-2 (S2) Earth Observation (EO) mission which provides optical high spatial -resolution imagery over land and coastal areas. As part of this mission, a tool (named S2-RUT, from Sentinel-2 Radiometric Uncertainty Tool) estimates the radiometric uncertainties associated to each pixel using as input the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) reflectance factor images provided by ESA. The initial version of the tool has been implemented — code and user guide available1 — and integrated as part of the Sentinel Toolbox. The tool required the study of several radiometric uncertainty sources as well as the calculation and validation of the combined standard uncertainty in order to estimate the TOA reflectance factor uncertainty per pixel. Here we describe the recent research in order to accommodate novel uncertainty contributions to the TOA reflectance uncertainty estimates in future versions of the tool. The two contributions that we explore are the radiometric impact of the spectral knowledge and the uncertainty propagation of the resampling associated to the orthorectification process. The former is produced by the uncertainty associated to the spectral calibration as well as the spectral variations across the instrument focal plane and the instrument degradation. The latter results of the focal plane image propagation into the provided orthoimage. The uncertainty propagation depends on the radiance levels on the pixel neighbourhood and the pixel correlation in the temporal and spatial dimensions. Special effort has been made studying non-stable scenarios and the comparison with different interpolation methods.