Continuous calibration improvement in solar reflective bands: Landsat 5 through Landsat 8

Abstract Launched in February 2013, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on-board Landsat 8 continues to perform exceedingly well and provides high quality science data globally. Several design enhancements have been made in the OLI instrument relative to prior Landsat instruments: pushbroom imaging which provides substantially improved Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), spectral bandpasses refinement to avoid atmospheric absorption features, 12 bit data resolution to provide a larger dynamic range that limits the saturation level and increases SNR, a set of well-designed onboard calibrators to monitor the stability of the sensor. Some of these changes, such as refinements in spectral bandpasses compared to earlier Landsats and a well-designed on-board calibrator have a direct impact on the improved radiometric calibration performance of the instrument from both the stability of the response and the ability to track the changes. The on-board calibrator lamps and diffusers indicate that the instrument drift is generally