Estimating the Surface Air Temperature by Remote Sensing in Northwest China Using an Improved Advection-Energy Balance for Air Temperature Model

Abstract EN

To estimate the surface air temperature by remote sensing, the advection-energy balance for the surface air temperature (ADEBAT) model is developed which assumes the surface air temperature is driven by the local driving force and the advective driving force.

The local driving force produces a local surface air temperature whereas the advective driving force changes it by adding an exotic air temperature.

An advection factor f is defined to measure the quantity of the exotic air brought by the advection.

Since the f is determined by the advection, this paper improves it to a regional scale by using the Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) method whereas the original ADEBAT model uses a constant of f for a block of area.

Results retrieved by the improved ADEBAT (IADEBAT) model are evaluated and comparison was made with the in situ measurements, with an R2 (correlation coefficient) of 0.77, an RMSE (Root Mean Square Error) of 0.31 K, and a MAE (Mean Absolute Error) of 0.24 K.

The evaluation shows that the IADEBAT model has higher accuracy than the original ADEBAT model.

Evaluations together with a t-test of the MAD (Mean Absolute Deviation) reveal that the IADEBAT model has a significant improvement.