Document Type

Article

Publication Version

Version of Record

Publication Date

8-2017

Keywords

Sentinel-2A; Sentinel-2B; Landsat-8; temporal revisit interval; near coincident sensor observation

Description

Combination of different satellite data will provide increased opportunities for more frequent cloud-free surface observations due to variable cloud cover at the different satellite overpass times and dates. Satellite data from the polar-orbiting Landsat-8 (launched 2013), Sentinel-2A (launched 2015) and Sentinel-2B (launched 2017) sensors offer 10 m to 30 m multi-spectral global coverage. Together, they advance the virtual constellation paradigm for mid-resolution land imaging. In this study, a global analysis of Landsat-8, Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B metadata obtained from the committee on Earth Observation Satellite (CEOS) Visualization Environment (COVE) tool for 2016 is presented. A global equal area projection grid defined every 0.05° is used considering each sensor and combined together. Histograms, maps and global summary statistics of the temporal revisit intervals (minimum, mean, and maximum) and the number of observations are reported. The temporal observation frequency improvements afforded by sensor combination are shown to be significant. In particular, considering Landsat-8, Sentinel-2A, and Sentinel-2B together will provide a global median average revisit interval of 2.9 days, and, over a year, a global median minimum revisit interval of 14 min (±1 min) and maximum revisit interval of 7.0 days.

Publication Title

Remote Sensing

Volume

9

Issue

9

First Page

902

DOI of Published Version

10.3390/rs9090902

Pages

17

Type

text

Format

application/pdf

Language

en

Publisher

MDPI

Rights

Copyright @ 2017 The Author(s)

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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