IMPROVING EMISSIVITY ESTIMATION IN RETRIEVING LAND SURFACE TEMPERATURE WITH MODIS DATA

Many researches conducted to investigate the relationship between surface emissivity and surface temperature in the past two decades and pointed out that the emissivity play a key role in applying remote sensing data to retrieve surface temperature. The task of surface temperature estimation is so important in many research fields, such as earth energy budgets, evapotranspiration, drought, global change and heat island effect. Therefore, it is indispensable to develop an effective and accurate technique to estimate the emissivity for accurate surface temperature estimations. This study developed an improved emissivity estimation technique for the use of surface temperature retrievals with MODIS data. The result of applying this improved technique using Band 31 of MODIS shows that the accuracy of estimated surface temperatures will be improved. This study also uses MODIS data observed in 2005 to establish the relationship between the surface emissivity correction factor and NDVI. Through the use of these correction factors, the land surface temperature can be retrieved more accurate with MODIS data.