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

Abstract

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.