Error sources on the land surface temperature retrieved from thermal infrared single channel remote sensing data

In this paper, a theoretical study complementary to others given in the literature about the errors committed on the land surface temperature retrieved from the radiative transfer equation in the thermal infrared region by remote sensing techniques has been analysed. For this purpose, the MODTRAN 3.5 code has been used in order to simulate different conditions and evaluate the influence of several parameters on the land surface temperature accuracy: atmospheric correction, noise of the sensor, land surface emissivity, aerosols and other gaseous absorbers, angular effects, wavelength uncertainty, full-width half-maximum of the sensor and band-pass effects. The results show that the most important error source is due to atmospheric effects, which leads to an error on surface temperature between 0.2 K and 0.7 K, and land surface emissivity uncertainty, which leads to an error on surface temperature between 0.2 and 0.4 K. Hence, assuming typical uncertainties for remote sensing measurements, a total error for land surface temperature between 0.3 K and 0.8 K has been found, so it is difficult to achieve an accuracy lower than these values unless more accurate in situ values for emissivity and atmospheric parameters are available.