The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission is fully operating since June 2017 with a constellation of two polar orbiting satellite units. Both Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B are equipped with an optical imaging sensor
MSI (Multi-Spectral Instrument) which acquires high spatial resolution optical data products.
Accurate atmospheric correction of satellite observations is a precondition for the development and delivery of high-quality applications. Therefore the atmospheric correction processor Sen2Cor was developed with the objective of delivering land surface reflectance products. Sen2Cor is designed to process single tile Level-1C products, providing Level-2A surface (Bottom-of-Atmosphere) reflectance product together with Aerosol Optical Thickness (AOT), Water Vapour (WV) estimation maps and a Scene Classification (SCL) map including cloud / cloud shadow classes for further processing.
Sen2Cor processor can be downloaded from ESA website as a standalone tool for individual Level-2A processing by the users. It can be run either from command line or as a plugin of the Sentinel-2 Toolbox (SNAP-S2TBX).
In parallel, ESA started in June 2017 to use Sen2Cor for systematic Level-2A processing of Sentinel-2 acquisitions over Europe. Since March 2018, Level-2A products are generated by the official Sentinel-2 ground segment (PDGS) and are available on the Copernicus Open Access Hub.
Since the beginning of the Sentinel-2 mission, the digital surface model “PlanetDEM 90” from Planet Observer is used as source of Earth topography information, within the Sentinel-2 PDGS. It is at 90-
meter resolution, based on SRTM data filled and corrected for 40% of Earth surface. However, until now most users had only access to original SRTM data to run with Sen2Cor or had to provide their own DEM following SRTM or DTED formats.
The objective of this presentation is to provide users with an overview of how Sen2Cor makes use of the topography information to improve the quality of the cloud screening and scene classification as well
as in the atmospheric correction and terrain correction.
In addition, the presentation gives an outlook on Sen2Cor working with the upcoming Copernicus DEM, a new Digital Surface Model (DSM), which represents the surface of the Earth, including buildings,
infrastructure and vegetation. This DEM is derived from an edited DSM named WorldDEM. The presentation shows the different L2A surface reflectance obtained with PlanetDEM 90, global
Copernicus DEM at 30 m and at 90 m horizontal resolution, and some of these differences are discussed
