Low Cost UAS Radiometer for Landsat Land Surface Temperature Verification

Land Surface Temperature (LST) is the radiative temperature of the Earth’s surface measured by an overhead airborne or satellite sensor. LST is widely used in hydrological, agricultural, and meteorological industries. LST products are becoming more sought after which requires data providers to create accurately calibrated data sets. In this paper we investigate the feasibility of building a radiometer to collect ground truth temperature measurements to validate an LST product, specifically the Level 2 product produced by Landsat 8. We designed and fabricated a multi-channel radiometer, that can be flown on an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS), to replicate Landsat’s Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) bands 10 and 11. Experimental results using a blackbody radiator show the radiometer successfully records accurate temperature measurements and is ready for flight testing with coordinated Landsat collects.