The use of thematic mapper simulator calibration data for assessment of data quality
In flight calibration data collected from the thematic mapper simulator (TMS) were used to assess the quality of Earth scan data. The following results are indicated: (1) based on limited samples, individual TMS channels have noise which varies from channel to channel, but remains constant within a channel; (2) short term variations of more than 5% in the average values of calibration source responses indicate problems; and (3) absolute radiometric calibration is unlikely to be meaningful in a temporal sense due to single point calibration methods used.