Land surface temperature retrieved from airborne multispectral scanner mid-infrared and thermal-infrared data

Land surface temperature (LST) is one of the key parameters in the physics of land surface processes at local/global scales. In this paper, a LST retrieval method was proposed from airborne multispectral scanner data comparing one mid-infrared (MIR) channel and one thermal infrared (TIR) channel with the land surface emissivity given as a priori knowledge. To remove the influence of the direct solar radiance efficiently, a relationship between the direct solar radiance and water vapor content and the view zenith angle and solar zenith angle was established. Then, LST could be retrieved with a split-window algorithm from MIR/TIR data. Finally, the proposed algorithm was applied to the actual airborne flight data and validated with in situ measurements of land surface types in the Baotou site in China on 17 October 2014. The results demonstrate that the difference between the retrieved and in situ LST was less than 1.5 K. The bais, RMSE, and standard deviation of the retrieved LST were 0.156 K, 0.883 K, and 0.869 K, respectively, for samples.