An Initial Assessment of Sentinel-2A MSI for Coastal and Inland Water Monitoring

Sentinel-2 MSI offers an improved resolution over the currently available sensors dedicated to water observations (e.g. OLCI). This makes it an attractive sensor to attempt water quality observations in coastal regions and inland water bodies, but only if the SNR statistics of the MSI are good enough and the optical configuration supports adequate atmospheric correction and water constituent retrieval algorithms. Here, an analysis of atmospheric correction is performed using 5 publicly available tools: Polymer, C2RCC, Acolite, iCOR and Sen2Cor. In situ data from optically diverse sources (Baltic Sea, Western English Channel, and lakes in Estonia, Italy and the Netherlands) are used to generate > 1000 matchups to compare the suitability and limitations of the different tools for different water environments.