Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Remote Sensing

Publisher

MDPI

Publication Date

9-15-2014

Volume

6

Disciplines

Biology | Life Sciences

Abstract

Satellite optical-infrared remote sensing from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) provides effective air temperature (Ta) retrieval at a spatial resolution of 5 km. However, frequent cloud cover can result in substantial signal loss and remote sensing retrieval error in MODIS Ta. We presented a simple pixel-wise empirical regression method combining synergistic information from MODIS Ta and 37 GHz frequency brightness temperature (Tb) retrievals from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for the Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) for estimating surface level Ta under both clear and cloudy sky conditions in the United States for 2006. The instantaneous Ta retrievals showed favorable agreement with in situ air temperature records from 40 AmeriFlux tower sites; mean R2 correspondence was 86.5 and 82.7 percent, while root mean square errors (RMSE) for the Ta retrievals were 4.58 K and 4.99 K for clear and cloudy sky conditions, respectively. Daily mean Ta was estimated using the instantaneous Ta retrievals from day/night overpasses, and showed favorable agreement with local tower measurements (R2 = 0.88; RMSE = 3.48 K). The results of this study indicate that the combination of MODIS and AMSR-E sensor data can produce Ta retrievals with reasonable accuracy and relatively fine spatial resolution (~5 km) for clear and cloudy sky conditions.

Keywords

air temperature, MODIS, brightness temperature, AMSR-E

DOI

10.3390/rs6098387

Rights

© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

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