OBTENCIÓN DE LA TEMPERATURA DE LA SUPERFICIE TERRESTRE A PARTIR DE LA SERIE HISTÓRICA LANDSAT

Thermal remote sensing provides useful information of surface processes occurring in our planet. In particular, thermal imagery at medium and high spatial resolution is useful in many environmental studies, such as evapotranspiration estimation from the energy balance equation, which is a key parameter when working in water resources management. In this sense, the launch in 1982 of the Thematic Mapper (TM) sensor on board the Landsat-4 platform and its continuity in 1984 with the launch of Landsat-5 platform, currently operative, have provided the users with thermal imagery at 120 meters spatial resolution for more than 25 years. In addition, the launch in 1999 of the Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+) on board the platform Landsat-7 have provided thermal imagery at 60 meters spatial resolution, despite that its use is limited due to a technical failure in the sensor. This paper focuses on the Land Surface Temperature (LST) retrieval, which is the main variable to be extracted when working with thermal infrared data. The paper shows the different algorithms that can be used to retrieve this parameter from Landsat data, highlighting those ones which allow an operational retrieval.