Comparative Assessment between the Satellite Land Surface Temperature and Observed Air Temperature: A Case Study of Dehradun City, India

The accurate assessment of the urban heat island (UHI) effect is one of the critical aspects in the analysis of urban thermal environments. However, the availability of real-time temperature data is a limitation in UHI studies. This work attempts to investigate the suitability of diurnal satellite land surface temperature (LST) as a proxy for air temperatures for the summer season in the years 2021 and 2022 for Dehradun city, India. The NASA MODIS based LST daily data are compared with observed near-surface air temperature (TAir) acquired from a network of seven weather stations installed in the city. The mean MAE and mean RMSE range from 2.5 to 3.0 °C, with 78.0 % of the values being ≤2.7 °C, and the correlation between the data sets is in the range of 0.55 to 0.78. The findings of this study examined the suitability of using satellite-derived LST in analyzing urban thermal environments for microclimates which may further help in supporting urban planning and development policies.