A generalized single‐channel method for retrieving land surface temperature from remote sensing data

Many papers have developed algorithms to retrieve land surface temperature from at‐sensor and land surface emissivity data. These algorithms have been specified for different thermal sensors on board satellites, i.e., the algorithm used for one thermal sensor (or a combination of thermal sensors) cannot be used for other thermal sensor. The main goal of this paper is to propose a generalized single‐channel algorithm that only uses the total atmospheric water vapour content and the channel effective wavelength (assuming that emissivity is known), and can be applied to thermal sensors characterized with a FWHM (Full‐Width Half‐Maximum) of around 1 μm actually operative on board satellites. The main advantage of…