Thermal infrared radiometric calibration of the entire Landsat 4, 5, and 7 archive (1982–2010)

Landsat's continuing record of the thermal state of the earth's surface represents the only long term (1982 to the present) global record with spatial scales appropriate for human scale studies (i.e., tens of meters). Temperature drives many of the physical and biological processes that impact the global and local environment. As our knowledge of, and interest in, the role of temperature on these processes have grown, the value of Landsat data to monitor trends and process has also grown. The value of the Landsat thermal data archive will continue to grow as we develop more effective ways to study the long term processes and trends affecting the planet. However, in order to take proper advantage of the thermal data, we need to be able to convert the data to surface temperatures. A critical step in this process is to have the entire archive completely and consistently calibrated into absolute radiance so that it can be atmospherically compensated to surface leaving radiance and then to surface radiometric temperature. This paper addresses the methods and procedures that have been used to perform the radiometric calibration of the earliest sizable thermal data set in the archive (Landsat 4 data). The completion of this effort along with the updated calibration of the earlier (1985–1999) Landsat 5 data, also reported here, concludes a comprehensive calibration of the Landsat thermal archive of data from 1982 to the present.

► We report the first thermal radiometric calibration of the Landsat 4 instrument. ► We report an updated thermal radiometric calibration of Landsat 5. ► We present the methodologies used to calibrate the entire Landsat thermal archive. ► We present the residual uncertainty in the data products.