An improved linear spectral emissivity constraint method for temperature and emissivity separation using hyperspectral thermal infrared data

Abstract

The linear spectral emissivity constraint (LSEC) method has been proposed to separate temperature and emissivity in hyperspectral thermal infrared data with an assumption that land surface emissivity (LSE) can be described by an equal interval piecewise linear function. This paper combines a pre-estimate shape method with the LSEC method to provide an initial-shape estimation of LSE which will create a new piecewise scheme for land surface temperature (LST) and LSE separation. This new scheme is designated as the pre-estimate shape (PES)-LSEC method. Comparisons with the LSEC method using simulated data sets show that the PES-LSEC method has better performance in terms of accuracy for both LSE and LST. With an at-ground error of 0.5 K, the root-mean-square errors (RMSEs) of LST and LSE are 0.07 K and 0.0045, respectively, and with the scale factor of moisture profile 0.8 and 1.2, the RMSEs of LST are 1.11 K and 1.14 K, respectively. The RMSEs of LSE in each channel are mostly below 0.02 and 0.04, respectively, which are better than for the LSEC method. In situ experimental data are adopted to validate our method: The results show that RMSE of LST is 0.9 K and the mean value of LSE accuracy is 0.01. The PES-LSEC method with fewer segments achieves better accuracy than that of LSEC and preserves most of the crest and trough information of emissivity.