Anke Duguay-Tetzlaff, Virgílio A. Bento, Frank M. Göttsche, Reto Stöckli, João P. A. Martins, Isabel Trigo, Folke Olesen, Jędrzej S. Bojanowski, Carlos da Camara, and Heike Kunz

Remote Sensing

Published date October 2, 2015

Meteosat Land Surface Temperature Climate Data Record: Achievable Accuracy and Potential Uncertainties

  • States that long-term LST climate data records with a high temporal and spatial resolution are useful for climate monitoring and climate applications
  • States the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites’ (EUMETSAT) Meteosat satellites provide the unique opportunity to compile a 30+ year land surface temperature (LST) climate data record
  • Compares the performance of two single-channel LST retrieval algorithms: (1) A physical radiative transfer-based mono-window (PMW); and (2) a statistical mono-window model (SMW)
  • Assesses the performance of the single-channel algorithms using a database of synthetic radiances for a wide range of atmospheric profiles and surface variables
  • Evaluates the two single-channel algorithms against the commonly-used generalized split-window (GSW) model
  • States the three algorithms are verified against more than 60,000 LST ground observations with dry to very moist atmospheres (total column water vapor (TCWV) 1–56 mm)
  • Finds that except for very moist atmospheres (TCWV > 45 mm), results show that Meteosat single-channel retrievals match those of the GSW algorithm by 0.1–0.5 K
  • Outlines that it is possible to put realistic uncertainties on Meteosat single-channel LSTs, except for very moist atmospheres: simulated theoretical uncertainties are within 0.3–1.0 K of the in situ root mean square differences for TCWV < 45 mm