Land Surface Temperature Estimation and Urban Heat Island Detection

Earth's land surface temperature is considered to be very important for modeling the environment. Following the trend of increasing global population, urban areas are expanding in spatio-temporal domain. In this way it is affecting the urban climate and subsequently the global climate. Thus, scientific understanding is required to conceive the knowledge about interaction between urban land use/land cover and the atmospheric conditions prevailing in that area. In this chapter the land surface temperature estimation and urban heat island detection are perceived from remote sensing perspective. The chapter in this context highlights three major aspects, viz. the theoretical background, description about some of the common thermal sensors and widely used algorithms to retrieve surface temperature from these satellite sensors.