Removal of thin clouds in visible bands using spectrum characteristics of the visible bands

Abstract

An algorithm to remove thin clouds within the visible bands was developed based on the simplified radiative transfer equation and two assumptions. We evaluated the algorithm using a Landsat8 sub-image of 041/036 (path/row) acquired on 29 March 2014. Thin clouds disappeared visually. With a nearly cloud-free image acquired on 14 April 2014 as the “truth”, the spatial coefficients between the “truth” image and the image before and after the algorithm increased from 0.47 to 0.83 for Band1, 0.55 to 0.82 for Band2, 0.73 to 0.88 for Band3, and 0.82 to 0.88 for Band4. The increase of the spatial coefficients quantitatively indicated the validity of the algorithm.