Kondratyev K., Kozoderov V., Smokty O. Remote Sensing of the Earth from Space. Atmospheric Correction

Berlin: Springer, 1992. - 484 p.
The monograph being proposed for the English-speaking research community is concentrated on the atmospheric correction of satellite images as a part of thematic interpretation procedures while processing remote sensing data. For linguistic reasons a large section of the community may have been unaware of the progress made in Russia in this field of science and technology. Meanwhile, Russia was the first country to launch the first artificial satellite in 1957 and to obtain from space for the first time spectra of the Earth's atmosphere in the 1960's. New applications of the radiation transfer theory for the atmosphereunderlying surface system appeared first in Russia in the 1970's. Direct and inverse problems of the atmospheric optics were then formulated giving the scientific basis for studies of natural resources from space. Since that time new mathematical treatments for the atmospheric correction procedures have been widely developed in Russia, including both analytical and numerical techniques to simulate spectral, angular, and spatial distributions of the outgoing radiation in visual and infrared regions. The authors of the book were at the beginning of the scientific approach. A wide range of mathematical improvements to elaborate polinomial approximations for dependencies between atmospheric radiation field and parameters of space surveying was due to the necessity to process satellite images in real time using special software of existed computer means for the studies. Another new scientific approach has included color coding simulation results in terms of spectral reflectivities and optical parameters of the atmosphere. Though the authors are researchers in physics and mathematics, the readers will find in the book some new applications of the techniques under study to optics of natural media and climatological interpretations of temporal data sets for radiation budget components of the Earth. The book summarizes new results concerning models of atmospheric aerosols, radiation and atmospheric constituents interaction, theory and application of satellite data processing. We hope it will be also useful for new ecological research from space.