Estimation of net surface shortwave radiation from land surface temperature in regional scale

Abstract

The method to estimate NSSR (net surface shortwave radiation) from LST (land surface temperature) in regional scale is discussed. First, an elliptical model between the time series of normalized LST and NSSR was developed using the daily evolution of LST and NSSR. Second, time series of LST and NSSR were simulated by common land model (CoLM) and were proved to be of high accuracy. On the basis of these, a non-linear least square ellipse fitting using the genetic algorithm method was used to fit the normalized LST and NSSR. Finally, LST was inverted using MODIS (moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer) data with the split-window algorithm, and the regional NSSR was then estimated with LST and an elliptical model. The validation result shows that the derived average NSSR of 50×50 pixels of MODIS data was quite close to the observed data, and the distribution was reasonable, which indicates that the proposed method was capable of estimating NSSR on a regional scale.