Modeling of Day-to-Day Temporal Progression of Clear-Sky Land Surface Temperature

This letter presents a method to calculate the width omega over the half-period of the cosine term in a diurnal temperature cycle (DTC) model. omega deduced from the thermal diffusion equation (TDE) is compared with omega obtained from solar geometry. The results demonstrate that omega deduced from the TDE describes the shape of the DTC model more adequately around sunrise and the time of maximum temperature than omega obtained from solar geometry. Additionally, taking into account the physical continuity of land surface temperature (LST) variation, a day-to-day temporal progression (DDTP) model of LST is developed to model several days of DTCs. The results indicate that the DDTP model fits in situ [or Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI)] LST well with a root-mean-square error (RMSE) less than 1 K. Compared with the DTC model, the DDTP model slightly increases the quality of LST fits around sunrise. Assuming that only six LST measurements corresponding to the NOAA/AVHRR and MODIS overpass times for each day are available, several days of DTCs can be predicted by the DDTP model with an RMSE less than 1.5 K.