Temporal variability of air temperature and remotely sensed surface temperature for bare soil

Abstract

Abstract Surface and air temperatures were measured daily at 13.30 P.S.T. for three seasons on a bare soil in California. Analysis of the temporal variability on the original data did not exhibit second-order stationarity indicating a large seasonal drift. Calculated residuals for each temperature from a 29 day moving average exhibited a range of 7 days in air temperature after which the measured values became independent, while surface temperature in the different years did not exhibit a consistent range. Cross-variograms calculated for air and surface temperatures exhibited a range of 7 days with all three years exhibiting the same pattern. This suggests that surface temperature could be estimated from air temperature for up to 7 days for inclusion into energy balance models and could be cokriged in the intervening period from air temperature. The accuracy in the prediction of surface temperature decreases as the internal increases and these relationships will have to be assessed for a number of environ...