SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL ANALYSIS OF LAND SURFACE TEMPERATURE CHANGE ON NEW BRITAIN ISLAND

Abstract

Land Surface Temperature (LST) is a parameter to estimate the temperature of the Earth’s surface and to detect climate change. Papua New Guinea is a tropical country with rainforests, the greatest proportion of which are located on the island of New Britain. Hectares of rainforests have been logged and deforested because of infrastructure construction. This study aims to investigate the change in land surface temperatures on the island from 2000 to 2019. The temperature data were taken from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Terra satellites and were analysed using two statistical models: spatial and temporal. The spatial model used multivariate regression, while the temporal one used autoregression (AR). In this study, a cubic spline fitted curve was employed because this has the advantage of being smoother and providing good visuals. The results show that almost all the sub-regions of New Britain have experienced a significant increase in land surface temperature, with a Z value of 7.97 and a confidence interval (CI) of 0.264 – 0.437. The study only investigated land surface temperature change on New Britain Island using spatial and temporal analysis, so further analysis is needed which takes into account other variables such as vegetation and land cover, or which establishes correlations with other variables such as human health.