Synthesizing Pseudo-Finer-Resolution MODIS Data Products

February 1, 2009

Office of Naval Research

A document discusses a methodology for synthesizing finerresolution data products from outputs of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments aboard NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites. Typical MODIS ocean color data have 1-km resolution, but those in five wavelength bands have 500-m resolution and those in two wavelength bands have 250-m resolution. Finer-resolution bio-optical-property data products improve our capability for monitoring coastal ocean and estuarine processes.

The methodology involves the use of the 250-m-resolution data, coupled with the 500-m- and 1-km-resolution data bilinearly interpolated to 250-m resolution, to synthesize remote-sensing reflectances that, after correction for atmospheric aerosols, have pseudo-250-m resolution. The aerosol correction utilizes data in two l-km-resolution near-infrared bands. Water-leaving radiances in the near-infrared bands are modeled from water-leaving radiances in visible bands using data from two 250-m-resolution short-wave-infrared bands. The resulting reflectances become inputs to algorithms that compute bio-optical-property products. The document presents examples in which four pseudo-250-m-resolution bio-optical-property products are compared with the corresponding 1-km-resolution products and with data gathered in situ.

This work was done by Sherwin Ladner, Juanita Sandidge, Paul Lyon, Robert A. Arnone, Richard W. Gould, Zhongping Lee, and Paul Martinolich of the Naval Research Laboratory for the Office of Naval Research.

ONR-0009