Determination of urban surface temperature using landSat images (Case study: Karaj)

Land surface temperature is a key indicator of energy balance. Besides, it serves as input data for models of climate change, agriculture, meteorology, urban heat islands, choosing the best time to agricultural activities, study of volcanic and geothermal activity, and fire detection. In this study land surface temperature has been extracted by available methods using 4 images of TM and ETM+ sensors of Landsat in span years of 1985 to 2003. The methods of land lurface temperature extraction included landsat project science office, mono window, SEBAL, Stefan-Boltzmann and single channel. Because of the multiplicity of methods and the number of images used in this study using a statistical method is required. It is required to determine the most efficient extraction method of land surface temperature, which is close to the existing field data. The statistical indicator used in this study was a mean absolute error (MAE). The results indicated that Stefan-Boltzmann method was the best method for both TM and ETM+ sensors. The MAE values for TM and ETM+ were 4.3 and 6.8 respectively, which showed a minimum value among other results.