Identification

Title

Comparison of land skin temperature from a land model, remote sensing, and in situ measurement

Abstract

Land skin temperature (Ts) is an important parameter in the energy exchange between the land surface and atmosphere. Here hourly Ts from the Community Land Model version 4.0, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite observations, and in situ observations from the Coordinated Energy and Water Cycle Observation Project in 2003 were compared. Both modeled and MODIS Ts were interpolated to the 12 station locations, and comparisons were performed under MODIS clear-sky condition. Over four semiarid stations, both MODIS and modeled Ts show negative biases compared to in situ data, but MODIS shows an overall better performance. Global distribution of differences between MODIS and modeled Ts shows diurnal, seasonal, and spatial variations. Over sparsely vegetated areas, the model Ts is generally lower than the MODIS-observed Ts during the daytime, while the situation is opposite at nighttime. The revision of roughness length for heat and the constraint of minimum friction velocity from Zeng et al. (2012) bring the modeled Ts closer to MODIS during the day and have little effect on Ts at night. Five factors contributing to the Ts differences between the model and MODIS are identified, including the difficulty in properly accounting for cloud cover information at the appropriate temporal and spatial resolutions, and uncertainties in surface energy balance computation, atmospheric forcing data, surface emissivity, and MODIS Ts data. These findings have implications for the cross evaluation of modeled and remotely sensed Ts, as well as the data assimilation of Ts observations into Earth system models.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d78c9x6p

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2014-03-27T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact