Land surface temperature monitoring: Aerospace technology helps sustainable urban development

Land surface temperature (LST), as a key physical quantity driving the exchange of matter and energy between the Earth's surface and the atmosphere, plays a crucial role in numerous fields, including climate change, environmental monitoring, evapotranspiration estimation, and geothermal anomaly exploration. As a key parameter for studying regional and global-scale land surface physical processes, LST directly participates in the calculation of related models such as global circulation models and surface parameters such as latent heat flux, sensible heat flux, and soil heat flux. LST is widely used in meteorology, geology, hydrology, ecology, agriculture, and urban heat island research. Particularly in the agricultural environment, LST is a fundamental parameter in many soil moisture and agricultural drought monitoring models. Therefore, timely and accurate acquisition of the spatiotemporal distribution of land surface temperature is vital for explaining and understanding global climate change.

Remote sensing technology enables large-area, synchronous (quasi-synchronous) observation of the Earth, with fast detection speed, low cost, and high temporal, spatial, and spectral resolution, making it an indispensable data source for obtaining land surface temperature and land surface emissivity. With the continuous development of remote sensing technology and the widespread application of thermal infrared remote sensing, the remote sensing inversion of land surface temperature and land surface emissivity has attracted increasing attention from scholars both domestically and internationally.

Land surface temperature remote sensing inversion algorithm

There are various methods for monitoring land surface temperature using remote sensing imagery. Different methods are suitable for different regions and research purposes. Among them, the method based on land surface brightness temperature is one of the commonly used methods for land surface temperature monitoring. Land surface brightness temperature refers to the energy radiated by the land surface in the far-infrared band, which can be obtained through remote sensing technology. This method has high resolution and flexibility, and can obtain more accurate land surface temperature data.

CAS Xiguang Aerospace - Land Surface Temperature Inversion

As can be seen from the data inversion diagram provided by CAS Xiguang Aerospace,Compared to October, the land surface temperature in Xiamen decreased in November. Figure 2 includes calculations of cloud top temperature, thus expanding the range of land surface temperature results to some extent.  

Currently, the increasing maturity of land surface temperature remote sensing inversion technology and the continuous enrichment of land surface temperature data products have spurred the vigorous development of land surface temperature applications. These applications provide guidance for scientific decision-making in key related fields such as agricultural drought, thermal environment, thermal anomalies, and global change.

Today, surface temperature monitoring has become an important direction for remote sensing technology in the field of Earth sciences. Utilizing remote sensing technology to monitor and study surface temperature not only allows for a deeper understanding of changes and evolution in the natural environment but also provides crucial information for the sustainable development of human society. In the future, with the continuous innovation and improvement of remote sensing technology, the monitoring accuracy and application value of surface temperature monitoring will be further enhanced.