Initial Sample of HYPERNETS Hyperspectral Water Reflectance Measurements for Satellite Validation at the measurement tower MOW1, M1BE site (Belgium)

The HYPERNETS project (www.hypernets.eu) has the overall aim to ensure that high quality in situ measurements are available to support the (VNIR/SWIR) optical Copernicus products. Therefore, it established a new autonomous hyperspectral spectroradiometer (HYPSTAR® - www.hypstar.eu) dedicated to land and water surface reflectance validation with instrument pointing capabilities. In the prototype phase, the instrument is being deployed at 24 sites covering a range of water and land types and a range of climatic and logistic conditions. This dataset provides the first published data for the HYPERNETS site at the measurement pole near the Zeebrugge harbour 3.65km from land, often called MOW1, in Belgium (M1BE). It is a subset of the complete data record which consists of the best quality M1BE measurements which could be used for satellite validation. 

The provided NetCDF files are the L2A hypernets products with water leaving radiance and reflectances, with and without NIR Similarity Correction (see Ruddick et al., 2006, DOI:10.2307/3841124). The reflectance in the L2A products is the Water Reflectance without NIR Similarity Correction (referred to as reflectance_nosc in the file) defined as:

\(\rho_wnosc=\pi (Lu-\rho_FLd)/E_d\)

where Lu is the upwelling radiance (at 40° zenith angle, and, 90° or 135° azimuth angle relative to the sun), Ld is the downwelling radiance (at 140° zenith angle, and, 90° or 135° azimuth angle relative to the sun). Ed is the (hemispherical) downwelling irradiance (i.e. including both direct solar and diffuse sky irradiance).

For the M1BE site, the reflectance corrected for the NIR Similarity correction (epsilon, see Ruddick et al., 2006) is also provided:

\(\rho_w=\pi (Lu-\rho_FLd)/E_d-\epsilon\)

These reflectances have dimensions of wavelength and series, where each series is a set of measurements for the computation of a water reflectance measurement. In addition to variables for wavelength and bandwidth, the files also contain variables that provide for each series the acquisition time, viewing and solar angles, and quality flags (typically no flags are set in the data provided in this dataset). These NetCDF files also contain further relevant metadata as attributes. See https://hypernets-processor.readthedocs.io/ for further info.

The HYPSTAR®-SR (Standard Range) instruments deployed at each land HYPERNETS site consist of a VNIR sensor and autonomously collect data between 380-1000 nm at various viewing geometries and send it to a central server for quality control and processing. The VNIR sensor spans 1330 channels between 380 and 1000 nm with a FWHM of 3 nm. The hypernets_processor (Goyens et al. 2021, DOI: 10.1109/IGARSS47720.2021.9553738; De Vis et al. in prep.) automatically processes all this data into various products, including the L2A surface reflectance product provided here. The current dataset is limited to the 400-900 nm range. Uncertainties are not yet included.

To obtain this dataset, we start from the full M1BE data record and omit all the data that do not pass all of the quality checks performed as part of the hypernets_processor. In addition, an additional screening procedure was developed to supply the best quality data suitable for satellite validation:

1. The coefficient of variation in water reflectance is below 10% in the 500-600 nm range

2. The water reflectance at 500 nm is below 0.1

The data consists of 73 spectra ranging from 20230226T1431 till 20230429T1502.

Coordinates of the site are the following:

site_latitude = 51.360548
site_longitude = 3.118246

The site is owned by Afdeling Kust (https://www.agentschapmdk.be/nl).