How the Ocean Color Product Quality Is Limited by Atmospheric Correction

A sensitivity study has been conducted to identify how radiometric noises and calibration errors on the level-1 top-of-atmosphere reflectances are propagated through the atmospheric correction and how they contribute to errors on the retrieved marine reflectances. Computations were performed using Monte-Carlo calculations and various atmospheric correction combinations were tested for typical atmospheric and coastal water conditions. Propagation of radiometric level-1 noise representative for MERIS or Sentinel-3 were evaluated in addition to typical calibration errors. Results clearly show that errors on retrieved marine reflectances are predominantly imputable to the quality (noise or calibration) of nearinfrared bands used for the atmospheric correction. Such conclusions must be considered for the design of future ocean colour sensors and important effort must be made to minimize the atmospheric correction impact through the development of innovative algorithm as for example POLMER or POLYMER algorithms.