Angular effect of MODIS emissivity products and its application to the split-window algorithm

The angular effects of emissivity are ignored in current land surface temperature (LST) products. As a result, the directionality of these LST products limits their further application in many fields. Accurate correction of the angular problem of LST products requires explicit understanding of the angular effects of emissivity at the pixel scale. Currently, nearly ten years of global emissivity products of MODIS are available. However, the pixel-scale directionality of emissivity has never been analyzed. By performing a statistical analysis of 5-year MODIS emissivity products over most of East Asia, we generated the empirical relationships between the directional emissivity, land cover, and seasonal variations. Two look-up tables (LUTs) of directional emissivity were created for typical land cover types and applied to the generalized split-window algorithm to modify the MODIS LST. The results showed that the angular effect of emissivity could introduce a significant bias of −1–3 K to the 1 km resolution LST. Finally, the spatial scale effects of emissivity were analyzed, and it was found that the temperature differences caused by scale effects fell within +/−0.5 K for most pixels if 5 km emissivity was used in 1 km LST retrieval. Therefore, wide use of the LUTs can be expected.