Thermal infrared remote sensing for urban climate and environmental studies: Methods, applications, and trends

Thermal infrared (TIR) remote sensing techniques have been applied in urban climate and environmental studies, mainly for analyzing land surface temperature (LST) patterns and its relationship with surface characteristics, assessing urban heat island (UHI), and relating LSTs with surface energy fluxes to characterize landscape properties, patterns, and processes. This paper examines current practices, problems, and prospects in this particular field of study. The emphasis is placed in the summarization of methods, techniques, and applications of remotely sensed TIR data used in urban studies. In addition, some future research directions are outlined. This literature review suggests that the majority of previous research have focused on LST patterns and their relationships with urban surface biophysical characteristics, especially with vegetation indices and land use/cover types. Less attention has been paid to the derivation of UHI parameters from LST data and to the use of remote sensing techniques to estimate surface energy fluxes. Major recent advances include application of sub-pixel quantitative surface descriptors in examining LST patterns and dynamics, derivation of key UHI parameters based on parametric and non-parametric models, and integration of remotely sensed variables with in situ meteorological data for urban surface energy modeling. More research is needed in order to define better “urban surface” from the remote sensing viewpoint, to examine measurement and modeling scales, and to differentiate modeled and measured fluxes.