Estimation of Satellite-Based Air Temperature Using Land Surface Temperature

Air temperature is an important parameter in both icing and fog, and thus plays a critical role in assessing the operational stability of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) during takeoff, landing, and routine operations. However, there has been relatively little research focused on directly retrieving air temperature from satellite observations. This study estimated air temperature over the Korean Peninsula in East Asia using satellite-based land surface temperature (LST). This study employed the fine-resolution LST (~100 m), which was derived from coarse-resolution temperature of the Geostationary Korea Multi-Purpose Satellite-2A (GK-2A) and Landsat 8 using Taylor series expansions and surface characteristic indices. To mitigate the atmospheric effects, the surface indices, derived from Landsat 8, included the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and the Normalized Difference Moisture Index (NDMI). The fine-resolution LST was then incorporated into the surface energy balance budget equation to estimate air temperature. It is anticipated that this study will enable the derivation of high-resolution atmospheric temperatures and that obtaining these directly from satellite observations will greatly aid research on modeling fog and icing formation.

 

This work was funded by the Korea Meteorological Administration Research and Development Program under Grant RS-2024-00404042.