Reduced And Full-Scale Assessment Of Super-Resolution Of Sentinel-5P Radiance Images

The spatial resolution of TROPOMI, the sensor mounted on board of the satellite Sentinel-5P to monitor air quality, is much higher than its predecessors. Yet, the high variability of pollutants limits the use of the resulting maps in practical applications. Super-resolution approaches can improve the precision of estimates, but their use is heavily reliant on the ability to precisely tune the parameters of the algorithms. For this reason, the employment of a specific image acquisition model is essential for both learning-based and traditional methods. This contribution leverages real full-scale images for validation of a recently proposed model for the degradation introduced by the TROPOMI instrument, which is applied to both classical and learning-based techniques. The model's validity can be evaluated by analysing the quantitative data and visually inspecting the images that have been generated. This contribution proves that the degradation model is an essential basis for the development of novel approaches as well as for the application of all already available techniques.