Tropical lake surface temperatures from locally received NOAA-11 AVHRR data-Comparison with in situ measurements

The estimation of tropical lake surface temperature from locally received NOAA AVHRR data was investigated. The applicability of published sea surface temperature algorithms in estimating the tropical lake surface temperature of Lake Malawi was confirmed; the most accurate algorithm being that of McClain et al. (1985) with a root mean square deviation of 0.45 K. Other published algorithms tested required localised bias correction. Newly derived algorithms showed the advantage of the triple window approach, with a correlation coefficient of 0.92 between the estimated and measured temperatures.