A case study of estimating thermal energy budget in Mongolian plateau using LANDSAT7/ETM+ data

The thermal energy budget using satellite data was investigated in an experimental field of Advanced Earth Observing Satellite II (ADEOS-II) Mongolian Plateau EXperiment for ground truth (AMPEX) around Mandalgovi in Mongolia. Ground surface temperature changes periodically day by day. Therefore, we studied a method of estimating the radiant energy from the ground surface per day using satellite measurements of brightness temperature at satellite pass-over time. We applied this method to LANDSAT7/ETM+ data measured on June 12. The ground surface albedo and ground surface temperature were estimated from the satellite data. Using the results and weather data, we estimated absorbed energy on the ground, radiative energy from the surface, and sensible heat flux in a day. Latent heat flux was calculated from the energy balance equation on the ground and estimated energy fluxes. To check this analysis, we calculated the evaporation efficiency. The average value of evaporation efficiency for the whole area except for pond was 0.11.