A Seasonal Investigation of Heat Fluxes in the New York City Region

Spatiotemporal variations in amount of available energy affect agricultural, hydrological and biological processes. Spatially distributed air temperature is among important factors of heat energy balance. Although meteorological stations provide relatively accurate data observations, their spatial coverage is limited and thus often insufficient for many regional applications. However, remote sensing observations provide larger spatial information and fill the spatial and temporal gaps left by the ground-based stations. In this study, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) products through the years 2003-2013 are used in order to estimate air temperature for New York City region. Land surface temperature and evapotranspiration data were obtained from MODIS instrument onboard NASA's satellites Aqua and Terra, and by using the surface energy balance equation the air temperature is computed and analyzed. Trend analysis of the data was performed in order to determine the evapotranspiration and land surface temperature deviation over the course of 11 years. In addition, the amount of land surface temperature and evapotranspiration fluxes were analyzed as the most important and governing components of the energy balance.