Is Sen2Cor output Rhow or Rrs?

Optical Toolbox sen2cor
#1

Hi everyone! I’ve been wondering whether Sen2Cor delivers water-leaving reflectance (Rhow) or Remote sensing reflectance instead (Rrs). All the information I have is that it retrieves Bottom-of-Atmosphere reflectance (level 2A product) but I don’t know if this definition is directly associated to Rhow.

1 Like
#2

I have the same doubt, I haven’t been able to find this information yet.

#3

Dear @lorenajuca,

Thank you for your query.

First of all, please note that you could find in section 1.1 of the L2A ATBD the following restriction that also applies to Sen2Cor version 2.11:

  1. The current processing baseline and processor version are not designed for
    applications over water or on coastal regions. The processor doesn’t contain
    modules for correction of water surface effects like sunglint. Both Aerosol
    optical thickness (AOT) and Water vapour (WV) are not estimated over
    water surface. However, the current implementation does not prevent an
    application over water using AOT and WV from the nearby land surface and
    doing without correction of surface effects.

You may find this information useful too.

If you are still interested making comparison with Sen2cor results and other AC processors over water you need to divide Sen2cor results by pi to obtained a result similar to Remote sensing reflectance (Rrs).

We hope you find these suggestions useful.

Cheers,
@Sen2cor_dev_team

#4

Sen2Cor primarily delivers Bottom-of-Atmosphere (BOA) reflectance, which is a type of at-sensor reflectance. BOA reflectance includes contributions from the Earth’s surface, atmosphere, and sun. It is a fundamental preprocessing step in remote sensing to remove atmospheric effects and obtain surface reflectance.

While Sen2Cor provides BOA reflectance, it does not directly output water-leaving reflectance (Rhow) or Remote Sensing Reflectance (Rrs) values. To derive water-leaving reflectance or Rrs from BOA reflectance, additional processing steps and atmospheric correction specific to your study area and water body type may be required.

#5

Hi,

To obtain Rhow or Rrs values from Sentinel-2 data processed by Sen2Cor, you would typically need to apply additional algorithms and corrections, especially if you are working with aquatic or coastal environments. Sen2Cor provides a solid starting point by delivering BOA reflectance, but you may need to perform further processing or use specific tools and algorithms to derive Rhow or Rrs values, depending on your research objectives.

Thanks

#6

Sen2Cor provides Bottom-of-Atmosphere (BOA) reflectance (level 2A product). To obtain water-leaving reflectance (Rhow) or remote sensing reflectance (Rrs), you’ll need to perform atmospheric correction and additional processing steps, using specific algorithms and data relevant to your study area.
you can check https://step.esa.int/thirdparties/sen2cor/2.10.0/docs/S2-PDGS-MPC-L2A-ATBD-V2.10.0.pdf
You can also find this 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'box_id' - #8 by Sen2cor_dev_team usefull.

#7

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