Accuracy assessment of land surface temperature retrievals from Landsat-7ETM+ in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica using iButton temperature loggers and weather station data

Surface temperature at a hieaarchy of scales is an important parameter for biological, hydrological,and climactic processes in the Antarctic continent A recent review of climate change and the environenmt by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR; http://www.scar.org/ ) came to an alarmingconclusion (Turner et al 2009). That the stratospheric ozone depletion over the continent has probably masked the potential warming effects of globalclimate change. Climate change is predicted to impact first and most severely the higher latitudes (Callaghan et al. 1992) giving importance forestablishing cost effective, high -resolution (temporally and spatially) climate monitoring network. Antarctica is the driest, the windiest, and thecoldest continent on earth due to its geography and topography. Most of the continent is ice and snow covered, only less than 5% is bare ground, with theMcMurdo Dry Valleys of Victoria Land containing the largest contiguous bare land. Water is scarce (Figure 1).Prior to the availability of thermal satelliteimages, temperature recording was limited to Automatic Weather Stations (AWS), requiring heavy logistics support and annual maintenance. Logisticaland financial constraints meant that single point temperature data are recorded from a limited number of locations; in the Dry Valleys an increasing numberof AWS has been deployed in the past few decades yet there is a great need for having a comprehensive spatial and temporal dataset for surface temperature