ANALYZING THE INFLUENCE OF ANOMALOUS ATMOSPHERE ON LAND SURFACE TEMPERATURE RETRIEVAL

This paper analyzes the influence of the anomalous temperature occurred at the near surface boundary layer of the atmosphere on the land surface temperature (LST) retrieval with the generalized split-window algorithm (GSW). The coefficients in the GSW algorithm corresponding to a series of overlapping ranging of the mean emissivity, the atmospheric water vapor content, and the LST are derived using a statistical regression method from the numerical values simulated with an accurate atmospheric radiative transfer model MODTRAN 4 over a wide range of atmospheric and surface conditions. The simulation analysis shows that the LST can be estimated by the GSW algorithm with the root mean square error (RMSE) increasing by larger than 0.2 K when atmospheric anomalous profiles are involved. Taking into account the angular dependence of the top of the atmosphere radiance, six different viewing zenith angles (VZAs) are used in the simulations. Results show that the RMSEs become larger when the VZAs change form 0 degrees to 60 degrees.