Modeling of Day-to-Day Temporal Progression of Clear-Sky Land Surface Temperature

This letter presents a method to calculate the width ω over the half-period of the cosine term in a diurnal temperature cycle (DTC) model. ω deduced from the thermal diffusion equation (TDE) is compared with ω obtained from solar geometry. The results demonstrate that ω deduced from the TDE describes the shape of the DTC model more adequately around sunrise and the time of maximum temperature than ω obtained from solar geometry. Additionally, taking into account the physical continuity of land surface temperature (LST) variation, a day-to-day temporal progression (DDTP) model of LST is developed to model several days of DTCs. The results indicate that the DDTP model fits in situ [or Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI)] LST well with a root-mean-square error (RMSE) less than 1 K. Compared with the DTC model, the DDTP model slightly increases the quality of LST fits around sunrise. Assuming that only six LST measurements corresponding to the NOAA/AVHRR and MODIS overpass times for each day are available, several days of DTCs can be predicted by the DDTP model with an RMSE less than 1.5 K.