800 
5. CONCLUSION 
Evaluation of different atmospheric correction methods for thermal remote sensing data needs high accuracy 
temperature measurement. The solution is to use a well characterised thermal measurement system to perform the 
temperature measurements in the sensor's spectral band at satellite coincident overpass time. 
For the ten Split Window methods tested, two of them (RAL93 and Li93) give very good correspondence with 
ground level brightness temperatures. The temperatures estimated by Becker90, Price84 are systematically 
warmer (about 2°C) than the field measurements, but those estimated by Kerr92 and Deschamps80 as well as 
Ulivieri92 are systematically cooler (about 2°C).The use of the LOWTRAN 7 radiative transfer code depends 
essentially on the quality of radiosounding data. If coincident radiosounding data are not available, the ground 
level brightness temperatures estimated by Split-Window methods are more accurate that those derived with 
Lowtran7 code. The first results obtained with the new correction method are encouraging but some more studies 
are necessary and under way. 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: 
This research is supported by a PNTS grant. The authors are also grateful to Dr M. Gorman and to Rutherford 
Appleton Laboratory for providing the ATSR data. 
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