Land surface temperature

Abstract

Temperature and emissivity are generally both unknown for “geological” surfaces of rock and soil and must be solved for simultaneously using inversion of Planck’s equation. These algorithms thus go beyond just finding LST and are discussed in the entry “Land Surface Emissivity.” Because of the underdetermined nature of the modified Planck equation (Equation 2), no single solution for LST has been found that satisfies all analysts. Therefore, literally dozens of algorithms have been proposed, tested, and applied. This entry summarized only a few, representative of the basic approaches.