Thermal remote sensing of near surface environmental variables: Application over the Oklahoma Mesonet

Many recent studies have applied satellite remote sensing data to large-sca le hydrologic and biospheric modeling. It is widely accepted that the therm al infrared observations from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) have the potential to estimate land surface conditions, such as sur face temperature, near surface air temperature, and near surface water vapo r In this study, algorithms to estimate all three variables are presented a nd applied to an area covering the state of Oklahoma for a six day period i n August, 1994. The results mere validated using ground observations from t he 111 station Oklahoma Mesonet. Validation of the remote sensing algorithm s with Mesonet observations produced comparable results to previous validat ion studies. In addition, the validation process revealed inadequacies in t hermal modeling that had not been detected in previous validation studies l eading to the development of a new approach to estimate atmospheric water v apor.