Retrieval of land surface temperature in the humid tropics from MODIS data by modeling the atmospheric transmission and thermal emission

Abstract

In the humid tropics, humidity is high implying a high water vapour content in the atmosphere. This causes strong attenuation in the radiation measured in the thermal infrared as the main absorption in this region is due to water vapour. In this study Land Surface Temperature (LST) is retrieved from single band infrared (IR) band through the modeling of atmospheric transmission and thermal emission given only surface parameters. Comparison of the LST retrieved from single IR bands within the same dataset and cross comparison with the standard MODIS LST Product gives high correlation indicating the validity of the models adopted for the atmosphere.