Evaluation of Three Land Surface Temperature Products From Landsat Series Using in Situ Measurements
Authors
Wang M., He C., Zhang Z., Hu T., Duan S.B., Mallick K., Li H., Liu X.
Reference
IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 61, art. no. 5000119, 2023
Description
Three operational long-term land surface temperature (LST) products from Landsat series are available to the community until now, i.e., U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) LST, Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera (IPMA) LST, and China University of Geosciences (CUG) LST. A comprehensive assessment of these LST products is essential for their subsequent applications (APPs) in energy, water, and carbon cycle modeling. In this study, an evaluation of these three Landsat LST products was performed using in situ LST measurements from five networks [surface radiation budget (SURFRAD), atmospheric radiation measurement (ARM), Heihe watershed allied telemetry experimental research (HiWATER), baseline surface radiation network (BSRN), and National Data Buoy Center (NDBC)] for the period of 2009-2019. Results reveal that the overall accuracies of CUG LST with bias [root-mean-square error (RMSE)] of 0.54 K (2.19 K) and IPMA LST with bias (RMSE) of 0.59 K (2.34 K) are marginally superior to USGS LST with bias (RMSE) of 0.96 K (2.51 K). The RMSE of USGS LST is about 0.3 K less than IPMA/CUG LST at water surface sites and is about 0.4 K higher than IPMA/CUG LST at cropland and shrubland sites. As for tundra, grassland, and forest sites, the RMSEs of three Landsat LST products are similar, and the RMSE difference among three Landsat LST products is < 0.18 K. Considering the close emissivity estimates over water surface in these three LST data, USGS LST has a better performance in atmospheric correction over water surface compared with IPMA/CUG LST. For land surface sites, the RMSE of LST increases initially and then decreases with land surface emissivity (LSE) for three Landsat LST products. This indicates that the emissivity correction has a large uncertainty for moderately vegetated surface with emissivity ranging from 0.970 to 0.980. Underestimated emissivity for USGS LST at vegetated sites leads to overestimation of LST, which could have led to the higher bias and RMSE compared with IPMA/CUG LST. For the LST retrievals for the three different sensors [i.e., Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+), and thermal infrared sensor (TIRS)] onboard the Landsat satellite series, the accuracies are consistent and comparable, which is beneficial for providing long-term and coherent LST.
