Neural network estimation of air temperatures from AVHRR data

Multilayer feed-forward (MLF) neural networks were employed to estimate air temperatures in Southern Quebec (Canada) using Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) images. The input variables for the networks were the five bands of the AVHRR image, surface altitude, solar zenith angle, and Julian day. The estimation was carried out using a dataset collected during the growing season from June to September 2000. Levenberg-Marquardt back-propagation (LM-BP) was used to train the networks. The early stopping method was applied to improve the LM-BP and to generalize the networks. Bands 4 and 5, which are used for retrieval of surface temperature, were the most critical components for the estimation. The contribution of Julian day to the precision of estimated air temperature was much superior to that of altitude and solar zenith angle for the clataset of inter-seasonal air temperatures. The network using all five bands, Julian day, altitude, and solar zenith angle provided the best results, with 22 nodes in the hidden layer. In the time series of estimated and station air temperatures, the difference between the temperatures was generally maintained within 2degreesC on various canopies, even during steep variations in August and September.