Intercomparison of AMSR2- and MODIS-Derived Land Surface Temperature Under Clear-Sky Conditions

Abstract

Land surface temperature (LST) is an important parameter in various fields, including hydrological, meteorological, and agricultural studies. Passive microwave techniques provide a practicable method to retrieve LST under both clear and cloudy conditions. In this study, LST derived from Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) brightness temperature data during nighttime in the period 2015–2016 using a physically-based algorithm was compared with Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) LST product MYD11A1 over 16 study sites that represent four different land cover types, i.e., barren/sparsely vegetated, grasslands, croplands, and evergreen broadleaf forest. Compared to MODIS-derived LST, the root-mean-square error (RMSE) of AMSR2-derived LST is 6.0 K and the bias is 4.4 K over all study sites. For barren/sparsely vegetated sites, LST was overestimated by 6.7 K. To eliminate the systematic bias induced by the penetration depth effect of microwave radiation over barren/sparsely vegetated sites, a linear regression between AMSR2- and MODIS-derived LST was applied and the RMSE decreases from approximately 7.8 to 3.5 K. For the other three land cover types, the bias ranges from approximately 1.4 to 4.2 K and the RMSE ranges from approximately 2.1 to 5.9 K. The bias between AMSR2- and MODIS-derived LST is related to vegetation coverage. The value of bias increases with the decrease of normalized difference vegetation index. Furthermore, the RMSE has a strong dependency on precipitable water vapor (PWV). It presents a descending pattern of RMSE with the increase of PWV.