Retrieval of land and sea surface temperature using NOAA-11 AVHRR· data in north-eastern Brazil

Abstract

The split-window method is investigated and a simple airborne atmospheric correction model for thermal data is proposed. Analysis shows that the atmospheric transmittance has a quadratic behaviour with the water vapour content in the first few kilometres of a wet atmosphere. The effect of the emissivity is evaluated for the retrieval of surface temperature using data from NOAA-11 AVHRR channels 4 and 5 for two extreme atmospheres. The results indicate that a spectral emissivity variation (Δε) in channels 4 and 5 of ±0.01 is not as important for a wet atmosphere as for a dry atmosphere. The split-window algorithm developed in this work has its parameters dependent on the atmospheric state and the values of these parameters are determined by using radiosonde profiles. Data from eighty-five radiosondes have been used to determine and check the local seasonal equatorial split-window parameters. The results of surface temperature retrieval show that the local seasonal equatorial and daily split-window parameters (given by daily radiosonde profiles) for NOAA-11 AVHRR data exhibit good agreement between their surface temperature results and the results of in situ measurements for two days. Comparisons with in situ measurements show that the maximum difference from retrieving a vegetated surface temperature using AVHRR data is less than 1.0°C in a wet atmosphere. Although the seasonal parameters have demonstrated a good performance when applied for two particular days, it does not indicate that they can be used successfully for other times when the atmospheric state differs from the average seasonal profile determined in this work. Evidence of this fact is shown through the variation of water vapour amount in the eighty-five radiosonde atmospheric profiles that have been analysed. This variation presents a wide range in water vapour from 2.8g cm^-2, to 4.92g cm^-2, which can significantly modify the retrieval of surface temperature using remote infrared sensors. Discussion of this problem is given in this paper.