Retrieving Downward Atmospheric Long-wave
Radiation Using Satellite Data
HUANG Miao-fen LI Jiu-qi WANG Xi-feng
School of Marine Engineering
Dalian Fisheries University
Dalian, China
Hmf808@163.com
AbstractUsing the measured data acquired from the
experiments of the agriculture demonstration field in
Xiaotangshan, Beijing in 2004 by automatic weather stations and
thermal infrared thermometers, the correlation expression was
established between surface radiometric temperature T at the
time of Landsat/TM passing by the study area and atmosphere
temperature T0. Through analyzing the data from 21 regular
weather stations in Beijing and 5 scenes TM images in 2004,
Beijing, the experience expression between the thermal inertia
(P) and air vapor pressure (e0) was created. Furthermore, the
model of Izionmon(2003) was used based on the two expressions,
and the spatial model was given that retrieve the pixel downward
atmospheric radiation under clear day using the remote sensing
parameters, such as thermal inertia and surface net radiation
fluxes. The retrieve results were validated using experiment
measuring data in practice. The improvement on the precision
rather than 9.5% of estimating the surface net radiation fluxes by
using the calculated downward atmospheric radiation on the
pixel basis. It shows that is feasible to estimate the downward
atmospheric radiation by making use of the thermal inertia and
the surface radiometric temperature.
Keywords- Landsat/TM; Thermal inertia; Downward
atmospheric long-wave radiation; Surface net radiation fluxes
I. INTRODUCTION
The determination and retrieval of the surface temperature
and the surface net radiation fluxes is important to
quantificationally study the interaction between the land
surface and the atmosphere. Downward Atmospheric Long-
wave Radiation, as one of the basic parameters for retrieving,
has direct influence on retrieval precision. The existing
parameterization approaches most are empirical modes
established from measured values, some based on the radiative
transfer theory, some empirical formulas completely, both of
them contact with study area closely. It is necessary to establish
the model of the pixel to improve the estimate accuracy of
downward Atmospheric Long-wave Radiation, overcoming the
error introduced by the unequally distribution of the
atmosphere temperature and water vapor, and the replacement
of the region with point.
Nowadays the main method to obtain the regional
parameters is remote sensing. How to get downward
Atmospheric Long-wave Radiation from remote sensing data?
This research was supported by Open Funds for Key Laboratory of Water
Cycle & Related Land Surface ProcessesChinese Academy of Sciences
(Grant No.WL2005002) and by Funds for Major State Basic Research Project
(Grant No.G2000077900)
1-4244-1212-9/07/$25.00 2007 IEEE.
LIN Yin-hui
ShanTou Technology College
ShanTou , China
Downward Atmospheric Long-wave Radiation mainly depends
on the moisture and temperature of the atmosphere. So the key
is getting these two atmospheric parameters. TM data has no
band offering atmospheric parameter. It is difficult to get the
atmospheric temperature and moisture directly. However, we
have known that atmospheric moisture is from underlying
surface and underlying surface heterogeneous determine the
quantity of vapor. They are direct proportion. It suggests us,
using thermal inertia can retrieve surface soil
moisture. Could we establish the relation between
thermal inertia and atmospheric vapor? Once the
relation found, getting the pixel atmospheric
moisture is possible. The increasing of atmospheric
temperature depends on underlying surface. If we
can get the parameters characterizing underlying
surface using remote sensing technology and
establish the relation with atmospheric temperature,
we also can obtain the pixel atmospheric
temperature. It is probable to retrieve downward
Atmospheric Radiation by complete remote sensing without
ground surface observational data as long as retrieving
atmospheric temperature and moisture from remote sensing
data.
II. METHOD MODEL
A. Thermal Inertial
Thermal inertial is the inertia of heat. It is a parameter
reflecting the intrinsic heats time duration characteristic of
object, the expression is,
1
P = (ck ) 2
1
In the expression, P is thermal inertial, unit is calcm-1s-
1/2
-1 c is the heat capacity of ground objectcalg-1
-1 is the density of ground objectgcm-3and k is
thermal conductivitycalcm-1s-1-1.Thermal inertial
is an important earth physical characteristic. It is a parameter
containing volume concept and it can be touch with land
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surface remote sensing information by thermal conductivity
equation.
Price (1977, 1982, 1985) [10-12] expounded the thermal
inertial method and its image formation process, and presented
the concept of apparent thermal inertial. It can use the albedo
of visible-near infrared band and temperature contrast of
thermal infrared radiation to calculate land surface thermal
inertial. From the point of application view, he brought a
apparent thermal inertia mode which can be retrieved using
satellite information and has some influence in the field of
remote sensing. The model has three basic variables: land
surface maximum temperature, minimum temperature and
land surface albedo. Energy resource is net solar shortwave
radiation,
2 SVC 1 a )
ATI = 2 surface. So air temperature mostly depends on two land surface
[t13:00 t 2:30 ]
In the equation, S is solar constant. V is atmospheric
transparency. C is function of declination of sun, longitude
and latitude. It compensates the seasonal variety of incident
radiation, the formula is:
1
C 1 = 1 / [sin cos (1 tg 2 tg 2 ) 2 + cos 1
( tg tg ) cos cos ]
3 We just established the relation between soil surface radiation
Where, a is land surface albedo. 1 characterizes
the reflective variety among different ground objects for the
same solar radiation. SVC 1 is equivalent to solar
shortwave radiation arriving land surface. is earths
2 relation between land surface radiation temperature and air
rotational frequency = t 24h/d.
T
Thermal inertial can be used to retrieve soil water
content. In this paper, the primary purpose is using thermal
inertial not studying it, so we choose apparent thermal inertial
mode improved by zhangrenhua:
(1 i ) S t
P= 4 vapor pressure, we have made full use of the datum from 21
Tsi Tsi _ min
In the equation, P is thermal inertialcalcm-1s-1/2
-1 ,S is total solar radiationWm-2 , i is each
pixels albedo, Tsi is land surface radiation temperature when
the satellite passing by , Tsi _ min is the minimum
radiation temperature. t is the difference between the
time of minimum land surface temperature coming forth and
the satellite passing by (measured by second). The equation (4)
suggests that the temperature difference between two time
phases is the best way to obtain the soils apparent thermal
inertial. However, TM image has only one phase. Long-term
experimental practice has shown that every ground objects
surface temperature has little difference except deep water
body when the land surface net radiation is zero before sunrise.
For example, the difference between the soil surface
temperature and leaf temperature of cotton is less than 0.3 ,
so all the ground objects surface temperature can be
considered as approximately equal.
1-4244-1212-9/07/$25.00 2007 IEEE.
B. The relationship between land surface radiation
temperature and air temperature
Air temperatures local change is mostly controlled by air
advection and radiation. Obviously, the higher the land surface
temperature is, the stronger the turbulent motion is, the bigger
the heating range of air is. Its influence on air temperature also
depends on soil water content, the roughness of land surface,
wind velocity, air stability and so on i.e. air temperature
=f(land surface temperature, soil water content, the roughness
of land surface, wind velocity, air stability). Different
underlying surface (soil, rock, cement, water, vegetation etc)
has different heating status and the relationship between land
surface radiation temperature and air temperature is different.
For different underlying surfaces, the land surface temperatures
are different. Vegetation fractional cover can be considered as
the function of soil water content and the roughness of land
parameters: surface temperature and vegetation fractional
cover, as well as two meteorological parameters: wind velocity
and air stability.
In xiaotangshan test in 2004, for the control of
instruments, we had the successive observation only for the
land surface radiation temperature of soil and air temperature.
temperature and air temperature. More relations between
ground objects surface radiation temperature and air
temperature needs further testing. According to the observation
datum of automatic weather station and continuous and
automatic recording infrared temperature, we established the
temperature when Landsat passing by( 10:30):
T0 = 0.5087 * T + 9.5414 ( R 2 = 0.87 ) (5)
C. Relationship between thermal inertial and
vapor pressure
To study the relationship between thermal inertial and
regular weather stations in Beijing. To make sure the
correctness of the study, we had the field investigations for
each station and precise localization on TM image, then
recorded the underlying surface status in 200 meters generating
area around the station.
The source of an areal atmospheric vapor contains two
parts: one is atmospheric circulation, the other is the
evaporation from the underlying surface. In order to erase
atmospheric circulation, we choose the minimum vapor
pressure from the 21 regular weather stations as the basic value
of atmospheric circulation and remove it from each stations
observational value. The residual is each stations underlying
surface contribution.
When calculating thermal inertial, we need ascertain the
effect weight of each neighboring pixel in generating area. The
methods can be divided into two categories: subjectively
qualitative method and objectively quantitative method. In this
paper, we choose objectively quantitative method. For
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objectively quantitative method, there are principle component image only use a value of downward atmospheric radiation
analysis, entropy method, least square method and max from observation stations in XiaoTangShan. The underlying
variance algorithm in common use. We choose max variance surface in XiaoTangshan is mostly made up of vegetation, and
algorithm to obtain the effect weight of the pixel and its the water vapour is more than that in the urban district, so the
neighboring pixels. For generating area usually 200m long, value of the downward atmospheric radiation is certainly
equal to 7 pixels of TM data, so we only consider 7 higher than that in the urban district. It leads to the higher
neighboring pixels effect weight. The weight coefficients are: radiation flux in the fig2.
0.5, 0.25, 0.125, 0.0625, 0.03125, 0.015625, 0.0078125 and
We further use the net radiation flux from observation
0.003906.
stations in the south of XiaoTangShan in 2004.7.6 and the data
According to 105 samples from 21 stations in 5 days, we obtained from the atmosphere observation station in
establish the empirical relation between thermal inertial and shangddianzi in beijing and the data of Beijing observatory to
vapor pressure: compare to the fig1 and fig2.Compared to the observation, the
e0 = 10.395 * P + 14.09 ( R 2 = 0.78 ) (6)
average relative error is 22.2% in fig1,it's 13.7% in fig2.The
precision of result rises by 9.5% by using the estimation of the
downward atmospheric radiation with one pixel by one.
D. Establishing spatial model to retrieve downward
atmospheric radiation based on thermal inertial and land
surface radiation temperature
Huangmiaofen compared 10 sunny day downward
atmospheric radiation estimation models using xiaotangshan
datum. The result showed that Izionmons model is better for
Mid-latitude zone. Substituting the equation from (1) and (2) in
Izionmons model, we establish the downward atmospheric
radiation estimation model based on thermal inertial, land
surface radiation temperature and other remote sensing
parameters.
Rld = [1 0.35 exp(10 (10.395P + 14.09) (0.5087T + 9.5414))] (0.5087T + 9.5414) 4

7
According to (7), we can retrieve each pixels downward
atmospheric radiation as long as getting the thermal inertial and Fig. 1 The Surface Net Radiation Fluxes results simple-calculated by the
land surface radiation temperature from remote sensing datum. downward atmospheric radiation
Consequently, we establish the spatial estimation model to get
each pixels downward atmospheric radiation using remote
sensing datum completely, abstaining ground measured data.

III. RESULT ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

The fig1 shows the net radiation flux of landscape which is
estimated through the TM images acquired on 2006.7.6 and the
downward atmospheric radiation from observation stations in
the north of XiaoTangShan at the same time. The whole image
only uses a value of downward atmospheric radiation. The fig2
shows the net radiation fluxs of landscape using the estimation
model to compute the downward atmospheric radiation with
one pixel by one ,the model is based on the remote sensing
parameter we have obtained.
Comparing the fig1 with the fig2, it's easy to find the data Fig. 2 The Surface Net Radiation Fluxes results calculated by the
downward atmospheric radiation based on every pixel
ranged from 374 to 813 Wm-2 in the fig1,and the data ranged
from 244 to 765 Wm-2 in the fig2 .So the data in the fig2
increases by 80 Wm-2. In addition, the net radiation flux IV. CONCLUSIONS
obtained with the inversion of the single downward To improve the downward atmospheric radiation retrieval
atmospheric radiation is obviously higher than the value precision, avoid the error caused by heterogeneous distribution
estimated with one pixel by one. That's because the whole of atmospheric temperature and vapor and fanning out from a

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point to an area, we firstly establish the spatial estimation
model using pixel thermal inertial and surface radiometric
temperature o retrieve downward atmospheric radiation
through analyzing the datum from 21 regular weather stations
in Beijing and 5 scenes TM TM images in 2004, Beijing. This
method is better than traditional model in which only one
downward atmospheric radiation value is correlated to one
scene of the whole image and improves the retrieval downward
atmospheric radiation on the pixel basis.
The retrieve results were validated using experiment
measuring data in practice. The retrieval precision is better than
the one with traditional model in which only one downward
atmospheric radiation value is correlated to one scene of the
whole image. The improvement on the precision rather than
9.5% of estimating the surface net radiation fluxes by using the
calculated downward atmospheric radiation on the pixel basis.
It is feasible to estimate the downward atmospheric radiation
by making use of the thermal inertia and the surface
radiometric temperature. Thus the application of this method
would have a bright future. The improvement on the precision
of estimating the surface net radiation fluxes will lay a
foundation for improving the estimation precision of surface
sensible heat flux, latent heat flux and CO2 flux.
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