Downscaling of the land surface temperature over urban area using Landsat data

In this work, the land surface temperature (LST) retrieval using Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data over the city of Florence, Italy, characterized also by the presence of rural and vegetated zones, was compared with a high-resolution (1 m ground pixel size) thermal image provided by an airborne survey made on July 18, 2010. Two Landsat scenes were processed before and after the flight, with the aim to evaluate the impact of the Landsat TM resolution of the thermal channel (120 m) on the LST estimation over an urban texture. The thermal data were downscaled at 30 m using a statistical approach employing spectral indices: such a method highlights the potentials and limits of the LST downscaling performed over an heterogeneous urban area.