Analysis of urban surface temperatures from ground-based and airborne sensors: Berlin, Germany

The ERC urbisphere project aims to forecast dynamic feedbacks between weather/climate and cities. The urbisphere - Berlin field campaign (Autumn 2021 to Autumn 2022) provides new information on urban- and regional-scale boundary layer interactions across a wide range of scales. During an intensive observation period (IOP) surface temperatures were observed with of spatial resolutions from <1 m to 1 km, coincident in location and time on many occasions. The August 2022 IOP, included multiple sensors: five ground-based thermal infrared (TIR) cameras (Optris 640 Pi and Optris400 Pi), aircraft mounted SatelliteVu MIR (Mid-Infrared) sensor and drone mounted Anafi Parrot Thermal. Satellite observations during this period include Sentinel-3 SLSTR, MODIS, ASTER, ECOSTRESS and Landsat. As the sensors differ in field of view, wavelength, and accuracies, here we harmonise the surface temperature from different TIR and MIR data, and evaluate its spatial and temporal variability during the IOP.

Acknowledgement

This work is part of the urbisphere project (www.urbisphere.eu), a synergy project funded by the European Research Council (ERC-SyG) within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 855005. Special thanks to the Chair of Climatology at Technische Universität Berlin for providing equipment, ensuring access to observation sites and to all those who contributed to the field work: Fred Meier, Kai König, Josefine Brückmann, Martina Frid, Beth Saunders.