Comparison of Three Algorithms for Retrieving Land Surface Temperature from Landsat TM Thermal Infrared Band

Landsat TM has a thermal infrared band(band 6,hereinafter referred to as the "TM6") which can be used to retrieve land surface temperature(LST). So far,three methods have been proposed to substitute the Radiative Transfer Equation Method for retrieving LST from TM6 data(due to the general unavailability of the in situ atmospheric profile at the satellite pass).These three methods are: Image-based Method(IBM),Mono-window Algorithm(MWA) and Single-channel Method(SCM).A comparison of the LSTs retrieved from these three algorithms over a research area in Fuzhou,Fujian,China,has been made.The research results show that:(1) when compared to each other,the retrieved LSTs from these three algorithms have similar overall temperature distributions,and the IBM and MWA have the smallest difference of the average LST of the whole study area,which is about 1.0 ℃;(2) when compared to the corresponding pixel brightness temperature,a higher difference value is obtained.For IBM,it is about 1.9 ℃,for the MWA and SCM,about 2.9 ℃ and 5.3 ℃,respectively.