Open AccessCombining afternoon and morning NOAA satellites for thermal inertia estimation: 2. Methodology and application
Author(s) -
Sobrino J. A.,
El Kharraz M. H.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: atmospheres
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.67
H-Index - 298
eISSN - 2156-2202
pISSN - 0148-0227
DOI - 10.1029/1998jd200108
Subject(s) - thermal inertia , emissivity , environmental science , satellite , remote sensing , radiometer , meteorology , thermal , albedo (alchemy) , radiometry , range (aeronautics) , atmosphere (unit) , geodesy , geology , materials science , optics , geography , physics , art , astronomy , performance art , art history , composite material
This is the second in a series of two papers on thermal inertia estimation from satellite data. In this paper we present the methodology that permits thermal inertia mapping using NOAA‐advanced very high resolution radiometer data from the four temperatures algorithm developed in the first paper. Four NOAA images are used to assess thermal inertia: an image at 14:30 (nominal hour) is used to estimate the surface albedo; others at 2:30 and 14:30 are used to estimate the diurnal surface temperature range, while images at 7:30, 14:30, and 19:30 are used to assess the phase difference. The main advantage of the methodology is that the phase difference is obtained from satellite data without the need to know the value of the effective surface emissivity and total water vapor content of the atmosphere. Following the proposed algorithm and the developed methodology, maps of thermal inertia are presented, two for the Iberian Peninsula (on two consecutive days to check consistency of the results) and one for Morocco (to check behavior in different landscapes). The thermal inertia values obtained are consistent with the known properties of these zones.