A case study for intercomparison of land surface temperature retrieved from GOES and MODIS

Abstract

In recent years, algorithms have been developed to derive land surface temperature (LST) from geostationary and polar satellite systems. However, few works have addressed the intercomparison between Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) and the available suite of polar sensors. In this study, differences in LSTs between GOES and MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) have been compared and also evaluated against ground observations. Due to the lack of split-window (SW) channels in the GOES M (12)-Q era, a dual-window algorithm using a mid-infrared 3.9 µm channel is compared with traditional SW algorithm. It is found that the differences in LST between different platforms are bigger during daytime than those during nighttime. During daytime, LSTs from GOES with the dual-window algorithm are warmer than MODIS LSTs, while LSTs from the SW algorithm are close to MODIS LSTs. The difference during daytime is found to be related to anisotropy in satellite viewing geometry, and land surface properties, such as vegetation cover and especially surface emissivity at middle infrared (MIR) channel. When evaluated against ground observations, the standard deviation (precision) error (2.35 K) from the dual window algorithm is worse than that (1.83 K) from the SW algorithm, indicating the lack of split-window channel in the GOES M(12)-Q era may degrade the performance of LST retrievals.