Surface Emissivity Derived From Multispectral Satellite Data

Surface emissivity is critical for remote sensing of surface skin temperature and infrared cloud properties when the observed radiance is influenced by the surface radiation. It is also necessary to correctly compute the longwave flux from a surface at a given skin temperature. Surface emissivity is difficult to determine because skin temperature is an ill-defined parameter. The surface-emitted radiation may arise from a range of surface depths depending on many factors including soil moisture, vegetation, surface porosity, and heat capacity. Emissivity can be measured in the laboratory for pure surfaces. Transfer of laboratory measurements to actual Earth surfaces, however, is fraught with uncertainties because of their complex nature. This paper describes a new empirical approach for estimating surface skin temperature from a combination of brightness temperatures measured at different infrared wavelengths with satellite imagers. The method uses data from the new Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) imager to determine multispectral emissivities from the skin temperatures derived over the ARM Southern Great Plains domain.