Comparison of direct and inverse methods of satellite observations downscaling for the coastal zone area

The Earth observation satellite imaging systems have known limitations, especially regarding their spatial and temporal resolution. Therefore, approaches which aim to combine data retrieved from sensors of higher temporal and lower spatial resolution with the data characterized by lower temporal but higher spatial resolution are of high interest. This allows for joint utilization of the advantages of both these types of sensors. As there are several ways to achieve this goal, in this paper two approaches, direct and inverse, of downscaling the land surface temperature (LST) derived from low resolution imagery acquired by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) were evaluated. The applied downscaling methods utilize biophysical properties of the surface sensed using short wave infrared and thermal band. The presented algorithm evaluation was performed on the basis of a specific test case: the coastal zone area of the Gulf of Gdańsk, Poland. In this context, the objective presented in the study was to compare two methods of downscaling for a specific test case in order to evaluate how the proposed approaches cope with the specific conditions of the coastal zone area.