Abstract: The presently disclosed invention relates to an apparatus and method for collecting satellite images of bodies of water such as the oceans and removing interfering clouds from the satellite images to improve the accuracy of the images. More particularly, the presently disclosed invention relates to the use of an apparatus and method to extract cloud edge information through local segmentation of the image and a procedure to discriminate between cloud free and cloud contaminated pixels. The cloud contaminated pixels are then removed from daytime and nighttime 1-km advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR) satellite image.

Abstract: Effective removal of atmospheric contamination for a sequence of satellite olor scanner ocean imagery is achieved through determination of an optimum Angstrom exponent for weighting data in a plurality of channels of different wavelengths by the method of providing a refresh plane display for data from one channel, weighting data from a selected reference channel as determined by an Angstrom exponent, interacting the weighted reference channel data with the data in the plane by subtraction therefrom to reveal atmospheric aersol bands, varying the Angstrom exponent to determine an optimum value at which the aerosol bands become transparent, and then weighting data from each of the channels by use of that optimum value.

Abstract: A satellite method for measuring sea surface temperature uses simultaneous overage by two satellites in the same spectral window plus a simplified atmospheric radiative transfer model. A geostationary satellite and any polar orbiting satellite provide nearly coincident infrared imagery of a given area with points of equal and unequal observation angles. The calibration curve of the data for one satellite is adjusted to match the temperatures of the better calibrated satellite data along the equal angle points. A difference image is obtained from the resulting two satellite temperature images. The difference image together with the two observation angles and the temperature of the more accurate satellite radiometer are input to a suitable atmospheric model to obtain sea surface temperature at each point in the study area. The result is an accurate sea surface temperature for each point within a given area which is corrected for a spatially variant atmosphere.