Super Resolution of Satellite-Based Land Surface Temperature Through Airborne Thermal Imaging

Abstract

Highlights: What are the main findings? A novel Dilated Spatio-Temporal U-Net (DST-UNet) model successfully downscales low-resolution satellite thermal imagery to airborne-quality thermal maps by capturing multiscale urban thermal patterns and demonstrates effective generalization across diverse urban environments. What are the implications of the main findings? Municipalities can conduct continuous high-resolution urban thermal monitoring from open-source satellite data at significantly reduced costs, overcoming temporal limitations of airborne campaigns and the resolution gap between optical and thermal sensors. This scalable framework enables more frequent urban heat island assessments, supporting improved climate resilience strategies and public health interventions against heat-related threats. Urban heat island pose a significant threat to public health and urban livability. UHI maps are created using satellite thermal data, a crucial source for earth monitoring and for delivering mitigation strategies. Nowadays there is still a resolution gap between high-resolution optical data and low-resolution satellite thermal imagery. This study introduces a novel deep learning approach—named Dilated Spatio-Temporal U-Net (DST-UNet)—to bridge this gap. DST-UNET is a modified U-Net architecture which incorporates dilated convolutions to address the multiscale nature of urban thermal patterns. The model is trained to generate high-resolution, airborne-like thermal maps from available, low-resolution satellite imagery and ancillary data. Our results demonstrate that the DST-UNet can effectively generalise across different urban environments, enabling municipalities to generate detailed thermal maps with a frequency far exceeding that of traditional airborne campaigns. This framework leverages open-source data from missions like Landsat to provide a cost-effective and scalable solution for continuous, high-resolution urban thermal monitoring, empowering more effective climate resilience and public health initiatives.