Iterative self-consistent approach for earth surface temperature determination

The split-window method is used widely for Earth surface temperature determination from remotely sensed data. The split-window coefficients depend on the surface emissivities, atmospheric absorption coefficients and total water vapour amount. It is always a challenge to obtain the local split-window coefficients for the land surface. An iterative self-consistent approach has been used previously for studying atmospheric effects in optical scanner data for the oceans. This Letter presents a similar approach for Earth surface temperatures. The method can be used for Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) thermal infrared data to derive the localized split-window coefficients, which are a function of space and time of surface emissivity, radiative forcing, etc., especially for land surface areas.