Near-real time LST monitoring system with MTSAT data over Asian megacities

Abstract

Population and economic growth are expected to continue with high rate in Asian countries, and urban structure can be transformed dramatically. Urbanization and increase in anthropogenic energy consumption cause urban heat island effect that means higher temperature in urban areas. In this research, we have developed a monitoring system for Land Surface Temperature (LST) over Asian megacities with Japanese geostationary satellite, namely Multi-functional Transport Satellite (MTSAT). MTSAT covers the Asia-Oceania region and it can retrieve hourly LST by its excellent temporal sampling. The developed system is open to the public on the WWW (http://webgms.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/LST/index.php) and provides latest LST images in the delay of approximately 3 hours. The system also allows users to search previous LST images by selecting arbitrary date and hour on GUI. Finally, we have demonstrated the monitoring of heat island effect by the system and it was found that it is effective to quantify the detailed time-series changes of heat island effect.