REMOTE SENSING OF AIR TEMPERATURE PROFILE AND SURFACE EMISSIVITY FROM HIRS2 DATA

A physical method,based on the simplification of surface radiation terms in remote sensing equations, has been suggested to retrieve the surface temperature,vertical temperature profile and surface emissivity from the first eight channel observations of TIROS-N/HIRS2.Analyses of several examples indicate that this method can obtain much more accurate temperatures in the lower atmosphere than a statistical technique, and that the surface temperature and emissivity retrieved are also reasonable.