Earth reflector type classification based on multispectral remote sensing image

Abstract

Earth’s reflectivity is one of the key parameters of climate change, Earth’s radiation budget research and so on. It is determined by the characteristic of Earth atmosphere components. Earth atmosphere components vary strongly in both spatially and temporally, thus complete spatial mosaics and/or richer time series information are needed. In this study, we developed an Earth Reflector Type Index (ERTI) to discriminate major Earth atmosphere components: clouds, cloud-free ocean, bare and vegetated land. Results show that the probability of the ERTI method with selected thresholds being able to discriminate between cloudy and cloud-free scenes is about 82%. ERTI can be used to interpret global Earth’s reflectivity and its temporal variation.