Land surface temperature and emissivity retrieved from AMSR passive micro-wave data

Abstract

A regression analysis between brightness of all AMSR bands and MODIS land surface temperature product provided by NASA indicated good correlation, so retrieving land surface temperature from AMSR passive data is available without ground truth data (soil moisture and land surface type). The analysis results (North-Africa, North-East China, Tibet) indicate that the radiation mechanism of surface covered snow is different from others. In order to retrieve land surface temperature more accurately, the land surface at least are classified into two groups. For non-snow covered land surface, The average land surface temperature error is about2- 3℃ relative to the MODIS LST product. For snow covered land surface, The average land surface temperature error is about 3-4℃ relative to the MODIS LST product. On the other hand, the emissivity of passive microwave is very important parameter for retrieving soil moisture. We compute the emissivity through land surface temperature retrieved by statistical regression method and make some analysis.