Inter-Comparison of Atmospheric Correction Methods on Sentinel-2 Images Applied to Croplands

Atmospheric correction of high resolution satellite scenery is a necessary preprocessing step for applications where bottom of atmosphere (BOA) reflectances are needed. The selection of the best atmospheric correction method to use on images acquired from new platforms, such as Sentinel-2, is essential to provide accurate BOA reflectances. In this work the performance of three atmospheric correction methods (6S, MAJA and SEN2COR) applied to Sentinel-2 scenes are compared by evaluating the resultant spectral signatures of six crop types on two specific dates, and their NDVI time series along a complete year. Although SEN2COR introduced greater corrections, especially in the infrared bands, the results suggest a varying performance of the methods depending on the land cover and the atmospheric conditions. Further research, particularly incorporating ground truth data, is recommended to rigorously validate the different atmospheric methods.