BQA band missing in Landsat 8 Collection 1 Tier 1 images?

Question

I am trying to filter low-cloud images from Landsat 8 or Path 39, Row 35 in GEE as part of a larger script to calculate LST around a solar farm.

I'm mid-way through exploring yet another approach and am adapting another persons script which didn't create a cloud mask for Landsat 8. The BQA band does this, but although I am able to identify low-cloud images using the 'CLOUD_COVER' value in metadata, for some images the BQA band seems to be missing and I get the error:

ImageCollection (Error) Error in map(ID=LC08_039035_20170611): Image.select: Pattern 'BQA' did not match any bands.

Am I doing something wrong? I thought Collection 1 data was complete? How should i handle images without the BQA band? I still need to mask clouds et al., but even if I knew how to do it mixing a method based on the BQA band with another approach.

An example scene would be LC08_L1TP_039035_20170118_20170218_01_T1 which isn't an SR product so I don't think this is a mistake regarding BQA/pixel_qa. I'm probably just doing this completely wrong!

var StatelineSolar = ee.Geometry.Polygon(
        [[[-115.50906528445387, 35.63597003699956],
          [-115.50906528445387, 35.528750545150906],
          [-115.36349643679762, 35.528750545150906],
          [-115.36349643679762, 35.63597003699956]]], null, false);

Map.centerObject(StatelineSolar, 14);

//cloud mask landsat8 based on the pixel_qa band of Landsat SR data.
var LC8_BANDS = ['B4',  'B5', 'B10', 'BQA']; //Landsat 8
var STD_NAMES = ['red', 'nir', 'temp', 'qa'];

//var cloudmasklandsat8= function(image){
//   var Qlandsat8= image.select('qa');
//    var cloudShadowBitMask = (1 << 3);
//   var cloudsBitMask = (1 << 5);
//    var mask5and7=Qlandsat5and7.clip(StatelineSolar).bitwiseAnd(cloudShadowBitMask).eq(0)
//                                   .and(Qlandsat5and7.bitwiseAnd(cloudsBitMask).eq(0));
//    return image.updateMask(mask5and7);
//};

var landsat8 = ee.ImageCollection('LANDSAT/LC08/C01/T1_SR').select(LC8_BANDS, STD_NAMES)
                  .filterDate('2017-01-01', '2020-12-31')
                  .filterBounds(StatelineSolar)
                  .filter(ee.Filter.lt('CLOUD_COVER', 5))
                  .filter(ee.Filter.eq('WRS_PATH', 39))
                  .filter(ee.Filter.eq('WRS_ROW', 35))
//                    .filter(ee.Filter.lt('BQA',))
//                  .map(cloudmasklandsat7and5and8);

Answer 1

Surface reflectance images have different (more) QA bands than the TOA or RAW images. Printing one image shows the bands:

bands: List (12 elements)
0: "B1", signed int16, EPSG:32611, 7591x7731 px
1: "B2", signed int16, EPSG:32611, 7591x7731 px
2: "B3", signed int16, EPSG:32611, 7591x7731 px
3: "B4", signed int16, EPSG:32611, 7591x7731 px
4: "B5", signed int16, EPSG:32611, 7591x7731 px
5: "B6", signed int16, EPSG:32611, 7591x7731 px
6: "B7", signed int16, EPSG:32611, 7591x7731 px
7: "B10", signed int16, EPSG:32611, 7591x7731 px
8: "B11", signed int16, EPSG:32611, 7591x7731 px
9: "sr_aerosol", unsigned int8, EPSG:32611, 7591x7731 px
10: "pixel_qa", unsigned int16, EPSG:32611, 7591x7731 px
11: "radsat_qa", unsigned int16

This is documented in both the Earth Engine Dataset Description (https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/datasets/catalog/LANDSAT_LC08_C01_T1_SR#bands) as well as the Landsat Surface Reflectance Product User's Guide (https://prd-wret.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/atoms/files/LSDS-1368_L8_C1-LandSurfaceReflectanceCode-LASRC_ProductGuide-v3.pdf)