Information Content and Uncertainties of Reflectance Spectra of MERIS and OLCI of Coastal Waters
Doerffer, Roland¹; Brockmann, Carsten²; Röttgers, Rüdiger³; Bouvet, Marc^4
1Brockmann-Consult / HZG, GERMANY; ²Brockmann-Consult, GERMANY; ³Helmholtz-Zentrum-Geesthacht, GERMANY; ⁴ESA, NETHERLANDS

Top of atmosphere radiance or reflectance spectra of coastal waters are determined by a large number of factors, the importance of which may change from pixel to pixel. On the other hand, the information content of these spectra in most cases is limited to a few (2-3) components, which can be derived with sufficient accuracy. The nature of these components may vary with the optical water type and depends on the dominating water constituents, aerosols, thin clouds etc. Furthermore, the importance of spectral bands changes with optical water types. For the DUE COASTCOLOUR project of ESA a system of algorithms has been developed to check if a reflectance spectrum is within the scope of the algorithm and then to determine the uncertainty range, which can be large for components, which are sub-dominant. Sensitivity studies within the ESA Water Radiance project have demonstrated that the determination of the uncertainty range is crucial for the use of remote sensing data of coastal waters.