Validation of the results of the satellite monitoring of land surface temperature

Considered are the methods for analyzing the reliability (validation) of the estimates of land surface temperature T s retrieved from the data of polar orbiting and geostationary meteorological satellites. Given is a brief description of the satellite payload (scanning radiometers) and algorithms of remote determination of T s from the satellite data. For validating the satellite estimates of T s it is proposed to use the cross-validation procedure, i.e., the comparison with independent satellite estimates of T s for which the error level is known. Presented are the results of cross-validation of two independent satellite estimates of retrieved T s from the data of SEVIRI/Meteosat-10, MODIS/Terra, and Aqua instruments. Such procedure can be applied to validate the estimates of T s which are planned to be retrieved from the data of Meteor-M and Elektro-L Russian meteorological satellites. Demonstrated is the limited suitability of standard in situ observations of soil temperature at the network of weather stations for validating the satellite estimates of T s .