Implementation of GOES‐based land surface temperature diurnal cycle to AVHRR

Abstract

To enable frequent estimates of land surface temperature (LST) from satellite measurements, and to characterize the land surface temperature diurnal (LSTD) cycle, two new LST retrieval algorithms are applied to observations from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES). Evaluation against the atmospheric radiation measurement (ARM) observations indicates that LST can be determined from the real‐time GOES‐8 observations within r.m.s. accuracy of about 2 K. In order to combine the advantages of geostationary and polar orbiting instruments, the LSTD estimated from GOES can be incorporated into LST retrievals from polar orbiting imager National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (NOAA/AVHRR) using a newly proposed fitting algorithm, with r.m.s. errors close to those obtained directly from GOES‐8.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Wen Meng for her help in processing the GCIP data under support from grants NA86GP0202 and NAG59916 from the NOAA Office of Global Programs. The ARM data were obtained from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program sponsored by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Environmental Sciences Division. We are grateful to the reviewers for their thorough reviews and helpful comments and suggestions.