A practical reanalysis data and thermal infrared remote sensing data merging (RTM) method for reconstruction of a 1-km all-weather land surface temperature

Abstract

An all-weather land surface temperature (LST) dataset at moderate to high spatial resolutions (e.g. 1 km) has been in urgent need, especially in areas frequently covered in clouds (i.e. the Tibetan Plateau). Merging satellite thermal infrared (TIR) and passive microwave (PMW) observations is a widely-adopted approach to derive such LST datasets, whereas the swath gap of the PMW data leads to considerable data deficiency or low reliability in the merged LST, especially at the low-mid latitudes. Fortunately, reanalyzed data provides the spatiotemporally continuous LST and thus, is promising to be merged with TIR data for reconstructing the all-weather LST without this issue. However, few studies along this direction have been reported. In this context, based on the decomposition model of LST time series, this study proposes a novel reanalysis and thermal infrared remote sensing data merging (RTM) method to reconstruct the 1-km all-weather LST. The method was applied to merge Aqua/Terra Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Global/China Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS/CLDAS) data over the Tibetan Plateau and the surrounding area. Results show that the RTM LST has RMSEs of 2.03–3.98 K and coefficients of determination of 0.82–0.93 under all-weather conditions when validated against the ground measured LST. Besides, from comparison between RTM LST and current existing PMW-TIR merged LST, it is found the former LST efficiently outperforms the latter one in terms of accuracy and image quality, especially over the MW swath gap-covered area. In addition, compared to the MODIS-CLDAS merged all-weather LST based on the Enhanced Spatial and Temporal Adaptive Reflectance Fusion Model (ESTARFM), the two LSTs have comparable accuracy while the RTM LST has higher spatial completeness. The method is promising for generating a long-term all-weather LST record at moderate to high spatiotemporal resolutions at large scales, which would be beneficial to associated studies and applications.