Impact of AVHRR filter functions on surface temperature estimation from the split window approach

Abstract. With the development of long-term remotely-sensed data sets through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Pathfinder programme, decadal length studies of the land surface are being conducted. However, data from five different Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) instruments and thus five different filter functions for each thermal channel must be used. If variations in sensor filter functions are not taken into account when the split window technique is applied, considerable error in the estimation of land surface temperature can be produced. For example, the Becker and Li (1990) equation was designed to be used with data from the AVHRR instrument on the NOAA-9 satellite. If it is applied to data from an AVHRR sensor other than NOAA-9's, the error in surface temperature can be as large as 2.3 degK.