Satellite Image Processing for Haze and Aerosol mapping (SIPHA): code description and presentation of results

The monitoring of aerosol concentrations becomes a high environmental priority particularly in urban areas. The aerosol optical thickness in the visible spectrum is a surrogate for fine aerosol concentrations, especially under pollution conditions with low mixing height, and can be measured with high ground sampling density with the help of satellite sensors. The SIPHA code was developed for such application on high-resolution satellite images and allows quantification of the aerosol optical thickness over land, snow and sea. The code compares multitemporal satellite data sets and evaluates radiometric alterations due to the optical atmospheric effects of aerosols. A novel feature of this code is the decoupling of the radiometric alterations due to optical atmospheric effects from those due to ground temporal variations. A real-scale application of the code on time series of Landsat data was carried out over European urban sites