Improvements in the global biospheric record from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR)

Results are provided of a project to derive improved products from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data record for land investigations. As part of this project, a prototype AVHRR processing system has been developed. This paper describes the different components of this system, which include radiometric in-flight vicarious calibration for the visible and near infrared channels, geometric correction and atmospheric correction as pre-processing steps. The processed data are then stored in a new intermediate data format, which enables flexible compositing approaches. The system generates surface reflectance and vegetation index products as well as new higher order products of reflectance at 3.75 mu m and active fires. A comparison of a significant sample of data with widely used precursor AVHRR products is presented to evaluate the processing chain and the improvements it provides.