Simultaneous atmospheric correction and quantification of suspended particulate matters from orbital and geostationary earth observation sensors

Earth observation (EO) data are excellent tools for studying the quality and dynamic of estuarine and coastal waters. In this paper we propose a simplified remote sensing method to estimate aerosol reflectance and suspended particulate matter (SPM). We validated this method with in-situ measurements from two different locations: the Poyang Lake in China and the Kenyan Coastal waters. In the validation phase, we used match-up data from orbital ocean color (MERIS) and geostationary (SEVIRI) sensors. Both locations as well as both sensors gave consistent results. The R2 values between derived and measured SPM concentrations were >0.94 for MERIS and >0.7 for SEVIRI. The RMSE values of derived SPM concentrations were less than 3 and 5 g m−3 for MERIS and SEVIRI respectively. Our method derived realistic patterns of SPM dynamics in turbid waters and spatially un-correlated aerosol reflectance maps. The proposed method can be applied to derive either SPM concentrations or its backscattering coefficient.