A simple model for spatial disaggregation of evaporative fraction: Comparative study with thermal sharpened land surface temperature data over India

Eswar, R and Sekhar, M and Bhattacharya, BK (2013) A simple model for spatial disaggregation of evaporative fraction: Comparative study with thermal sharpened land surface temperature data over India. In: JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-ATMOSPHERES, 118 (21). pp. 12029-12044.

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Abstract

[1] Evaporative fraction (EF) is a measure of the amount of available energy at the earth surface that is partitioned into latent heat flux. The currently operational thermal sensors like the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on satellite platforms provide data only at 1000 m, which constraints the spatial resolution of EF estimates. A simple model (disaggregation of evaporative fraction (DEFrac)) based on the observed relationship between EF and the normalized difference vegetation index is proposed to spatially disaggregate EF. The DEFrac model was tested with EF estimated from the triangle method using 113 clear sky data sets from the MODIS sensor aboard Terra and Aqua satellites. Validation was done using the data at four micrometeorological tower sites across varied agro-climatic zones possessing different land cover conditions in India using Bowen ratio energy balance method. The root-mean-square error (RMSE) of EF estimated at 1000 m resolution using the triangle method was 0.09 for all the four sites put together. The RMSE of DEFrac disaggregated EF was 0.09 for 250 m resolution. Two models of input disaggregation were also tried with thermal data sharpened using two thermal sharpening models DisTrad and TsHARP. The RMSE of disaggregated EF was 0.14 for both the input disaggregation models for 250 m resolution. Moreover, spatial analysis of disaggregation was performed using Landsat-7 (Enhanced Thematic Mapper) ETM+ data over four grids in India for contrasted seasons. It was observed that the DEFrac model performed better than the input disaggregation models under cropped conditions while they were marginally similar under non-cropped conditions.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-ATMOSPHERES
Publisher:	AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article is belongs to AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
Department/Centre:	Division of Mechanical Sciences > Civil Engineering
Date Deposited:	17 Mar 2014 11:21
Last Modified:	19 Mar 2014 05:11
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/48655

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