Estimating Land Surface Temperature and its lapse rate over Kashmir valley using MODIS data

Abstract

The study of the Land Surface Temperature (LST) is very important for its applications in many fields of natural sciences and is oftenused as input data in climate, agro-meteorological or hydrological models for forecasting ecosystem responses. Due to sparse and irregular distribution of meteorological station over Kashmir Himalayas, climate forecasting using interpolation of metrological air temperature data (Tair) is not scientifically robust option. Remotely-sensed LST is, therefore, a good option to supplement the scanty network of the ground-based temperature observations for understanding and modelling a variety of environmental and ecological processes and phenomena. In the present study, an attempt was made to estimate LST and its lapse rate over Kashmir Himalayas using MODIS data and relate it with air temperature (Tair) from Indian Metrological Department. Comparison between LST and Tair shows a very close agreement with MAE of ±2°C. The calculated correlation coefficient between Tair and LST is above 0.9. Using ASTER DEM, LST was used to estimate the Lapse rate along various transects across the Kashmir Himalaya, which showed variations in space and time (from 0.3°C to 1.2°C per 100m change in the altitude). The information and knowledge generated from this research are going to improve the understanding and quantifications of various processes related to climate, hydrology and ecosystem where the use of temperature and lapse rate is an important and critical driving force.