Assessment of MTI Water Temperature Thermal Discharge Retrievals with Ground Truth

[摘要] Surface water temperatures calculated from Multispectral Thermal Imager (MTI) brightness temperatures and the robust retrieval algorithm, developed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), are compared with ground truth measurements at a mid-latitude cold-water site along the Atlantic coast near Plymouth, MA. In contrast to the relative uniformity of the sea-surface temperature in the open ocean the water temperature near Pilgrim exhibits strong spatial gradients and temporal variability. This made it critical that all images be accurately registered in order to extract temperature values at the six buoy locations. Sixteen images during a one-year period from August 2000 to July 2001 were selected for the study. The RMS error of Pilgrim water temperature is about 3.5 C for the 4 buoys located in open water. The RMS error of the combined temperatures from 3 of the open-water buoys is 2.8 C. The RMS error includes errors in the ground truth. The magnitude of this error is estimated to range between 0.8 and 2.3 C. The two main components of this error are warm-layer effect and spatial variability. The actual error in the MTI retrievals for Pilgrim daytime conditions is estimated to be between 2.7 and 3.4 C for individual buoys and between 1.7 and 2.7 C for the combined open-water buoys.

[发布日期] 2002-12-06 [发布机构] Savannah River Site (S.C.)

[关键词] Surface Waters;Atlantic Ocean;Brightness;Remote Sensing;Multispectral Photography