Thermal infrared (TIR) land surface temperature (LST) products derived from geostationary satellites have a high temporal resolution in a diurnal cycle, but they have many missing values under cloudy-sky conditions. Therefore, it is pressing to obtain all-weather LST (AW LST) with a high temporal resolution by filling the gap of TIR LST. In this study, a method integrating reanalysis data and TIR data from geostationary satellites (RTG) was proposed for reconstructing hourly AW LST. Then, taking the Tibetan Plateau, which is a focus of climate change as a case, RTG was applied to the Chinese Fengyun-4A (FY-4A) TIR LST and China Land Surface Data Assimilation System (CLDAS) data. Validation based on the in-situ LST shows that the accuracy of the AW LST is better than the FY-4A LST and CLDAS LST under clear-sky, cloudy-sky, and all-weather conditions. The mean RMSEs are 3.02 K for clear-sky conditions, 3.94 K for cloudy-sky conditions, and 3.57 K for all-weather conditions. Uncertainty and coarse resolution of the original FY-4A and CLDAS data affect the accuracy of the obtained AW LST. The results of the LST time series comparison also show that the reconstructed AW LST is consistent with in-situ LST. The reconstructed AW LST also has good image quality and provides reliable spatial patterns. RTG is practical in obtaining high temporal resolution AW LST from the Chinese FY-4A to satisfy related applications. It can also be extended to other geostationary satellites and reanalysis datasets.
10 August 2021 in IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) thermal infrared (TIR) remote sensing is an important way to obtain land surface temperature (LST) with high spatial and temporal resolutions. Due to wide spectral response function (SRF) ranges of UAV thermal imagers, currently available LST retrieval methods suitable for satellite sensors may induce significant uncertainty when applied to UAV sensors. Despite that some methods have been proposed to retrieve LST from UAV remote sensing, studies considering the adverse effect caused by the SRF ranges are still rare. Here, we present a so-called Temperature Retrieval for UAV Broadband thermal imager data (TRUB) method to retrieve LST from UAV broadband thermal imager data. TRUB’s core includes two parts: 1) a simple lookup table (LUT) algorithm for reducing the uncertainty induced by the wide SRF ranges; and 2) models suitable for UAV remote sensing for estimating the atmospheric parameters. Validation from the Heihe River Basin shows that the LST retrieved by TRUB, of which the root mean square error (RMSE) and mean bias error (MBE) is 1.71 and −0.02 K, respectively, is highly consistent with the in situ LST. TRUB is helpful to reduce the uncertainty caused by the wide SRF ranges of UAV thermal imagers and quantify the influence of atmosphere, thus can obtain UAV remote-sensing LST with better accuracy in large-area operating missions.
25 January 2025 in ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing