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Accounting for the clouds

Clouds can be a real headache when it comes to satellite imaging. Thin, almost transparent cirrus clouds are often difficult to spot, leaving scientists scratching their heads when data from pixels beneath them come out slightly skewed.



But Landsat 8 has an answer for that.



The newest spacecraft in the Landsat family – which has been acquiring data since February 2013 – contains a spectral band on its Operational Land Imager (OLI) that identifies the high-altitude clouds that are not otherwise apparent in other bands.



These images show that well. On the left, cirrus formations drift above the landscape. On the other hand, cirrus clouds are difficult to discern in the natural-color composite Landsat 8 image on the right, looking down on Columbia, S.C., and across the border north to Charlotte, N.C.



Scientists are using the cirrus band to flag images that are heavy with cirrus cloud contamination. Landsat’s newest band makes that easy to detect, thus allowing for the most accurate data possible.

 

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