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Chapter 10
Obviously, surface biophysical properties in the solar spectral range will
not change tremendously every 15 minutes, so that the advantage frequent
observations may be questionable. These frequent observations should
permit a better documentation the radiative transfer processes in the
atmosphere-vegetation-soil system, and therefore an increase of the retrieved
product accuracy and quality control, provided appropriate algorithms are
developed. Consequently, instead of providing an exhaustive list of new
potential biospheric variables that can be derived from SEVIRI, it is
desirable to focus on the implications of exploiting geostationary observation
and on the design of appropriate advanced algorithms. For the sake of
simplicity, the discussion is limited to the red and near-infrared spectral
region.
To illustrate the differences between geostationary and polar orbiting
space-borne observations, a simple and limited case study has been carried
out on observed radiance sensitivity to Leaf Area Index (LAI) changes. This
parameter is particularly difficult to derive because it requires the
discrimination of the respective contributions from the soil and the