October 20, 2025 — Ocean color satellites provide essential insights into water quality and ecosystem dynamics by estimating chlorophyll, suspended matter, and dissolved organic material. Atmospheric correction, the process of removing scattering and absorption from satellite signals, is central to these analyses.
Traditional algorithms assume that near-infrared signals from seawater are negligible, a simplification that often fails in turbid coastal regions. Compounding this issue, most models treat seawater absorption as constant, overlooking natural variability driven by temperature shifts. Such oversights can distort data products used for fisheries, pollution tracking, and climate studies. Due to these problems, there is a pressing need for algorithms that explicitly account for environmental variability.
Researchers from the Ocean University of China and collaborators report a major step forward in remote sensing accuracy in the Journal of Remote Sensing. Their study introduces ACiter-T, an upgraded atmospheric correction algorithm that incorporates seawater temperature effects into satellite processing.