THIS STUDY WILL DETERMINE CLOUD PROPERTIES FROM LANDSAT 4 THEMATIC MAPPER (TM) DATA BY COMBINING A SPATIAL COHERENCE APPROACH WITH A VARIETY OF CLOUD PARAMETER RETRIEVAL METHODS.

THIS STUDY WILL DETERMINE CLOUD PROPERTIES FROM LANDSAT 4 THEMATIC MAPPER (TM) DATA BY COMBINING A SPATIAL COHERENCE APPROACH WITH A VARIETY OF CLOUD PARAMETER RETRIEVAL METHODS. THE TM HAS SEVEN SPECTRAL BANDS WHICH, IN PRINCIPLE, ALLOW CLOUD AMOUNT, HEIGHT, PHASE, AND THICKNESS TO BE RETRIEVED. CLOUD PARTICLE SIZE MAY ALSO BE RETRIEVABLE. THE SPATIAL COHERENCE APPROACH WILL ACCOUNT FOR PARTIAL BEAM FILLING AND IDENTIFY HOMOGENEOUS AREAS IN THE SCENE, THEREBY ALLOWING EFFICIENT COMPOSITING FOR CLOUD PARAMETER RETRIEVALS. A VARIETY OF CLOUD PARAMETER RETRIEVAL METHODS WILL BE UTILIZED INCLUDING BISPECTRAL, THRESHOLD, AND STATISTICAL METHODS. AS PARTICULAR ALGORITHMS FOR THE TM DATA ARE DEVELOPED AND APPLIED, A VARIETY OF RADIATIVE TRANSFER CALCULATIONS WILL BE PERFORMED TO OPTIMIZE THESE METHODS.