Abstract

Land surface skin temperature (Tskin) is the variable retrieved from satellite remote sensing to represent the land surface radiameteric energy. This temperature is directly used in the land surface energy budget to calculate upward longwave radiation, sensible, latent and ground heat fluxes. Therefore, besides the traditional WMO 2-m surface air temperature observations, this variable provides an independent, additional index for climate change study. With the use of 18-year (1981-1998) satellite Tskin measurements from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and 10-year (2000-2010) data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Earth Observing Syste (EOS) Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), we show that surface temperature increased in the 1980s-1990s. Significant changes in land cover in terms of albedo, emissivity, vegetation coverage is responsible, in part, for the surface temperature change. Furthermore, land-atmosphere interaction is also critical for the Tskin change.