Towards an operational algorithm for inferring soil and foliage component temperatures from ATSR-2

Presents an operational algorithm for retrieving foliage and soil temperatures over mixed land surface pixels on the basis of the analysis of dual-angle and multichannel observations made by ATSR-2. First a physical model to retrieve separately foliage and soil temperatures from two-angle measurements using the six channels of ATSR-2 is recalled briefly. Four visible, near-infrared and short wave infrared channels are used to determine the fraction cover of vegetation within a pixel, while the two thermal infrared channels are used to determine with the split window method the ground surface brightness temperatures at two view angles. Then an implementation of this method is given and several case studies are undertaken with ATSR-2 data, showing encouraging results of the two-component temperature retrieval