Intercomparison of methods for estimating land surface temperature from a Landsat-5 TM image in an arid region with low water vapour in the atmosphere

Intercomparison of methods for estimating land surface temperature from a Landsat-5 TM image in an arid region with low water vapour in the atmosphere

International Journal of Remote Sensing

This study compares the methods for retrieving the land surface temperature (LST) (T s) from Landsat-5 TM (Thematic Mapper) data, including the radiative transfer equation (RTE) method, the mono-window algorithm (MWA) and the generalized single-channel (GSC) method in an arid region with low atmospheric water vapour content. In addition, T s calculated without atmospheric correction of TM band 6 is also assessed. The intercomparison is divided into two parts. The first part is applying the methods at the Biandukou site (100° 58′ E, 38° 16′ N, elevation = 2690 m) and the second part is applying them at Binggou (100° 13′ E, 38° 42′ N, elevation = 3400 m) and Arou (100° 27′ E, 38° 36′ N, elevation = 2960 m) sites. Results demonstrate that these methods provide acceptable accuracies at the Biandukou site. At this site, GSC generates nearly the same accuracy as RTE; MWA estimations are slightly less accurate than RTE and GSC; estimations without atmospheric correction of TM band 6 exhibit the largest errors. On the other hand, MWA is a good choice for retrieving the LST at Binggou and Arou sites. In cases where the meteorological parameters are unavailable, it is an alternative option to calculate T s directly from TM band 6 image without atmospheric correction at these two sites.