Heat Capacity Mapping Mission (HCMM) thermal surface water mapping and its correlation to Landsat

The Heat Capacity Mapping Mission (HCMM) involves a relatively simple satellite recording the radiation from the Earth in the thermal band (10.5 to 12.5 μm) using an instantaneous field-of-view (IFOV, "footprint" or pixel) of 600 x 600 m. The enclosed graphics illustrate HCMM thermal mapping of water bodies as applied to Lake Anna. The HCMM digital data were produced by NASA and processed by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration/National Environmental Satellite Service (NOAA/NESS) into image and line-printer form for the U.S. Geological Survey. A Landsat image of Lake Anna illustrates the relationship between the Landsat multispectral scanner (MSS) and the HCMM data as now processed by NASA through their Image Processing Facility (IPF) which transforms the data to the same distortion-free Hotine Oblique Mercator (HOM) map projection. Spatial correlation of the two images is relatively simple by either analog or digital means and the HCMM image has a potential accuracy (root-mean-square error--rmse) approaching the 80 m of the original Landsat data.