Temperature Accuracy Analysis by Land Cover According to the Angle of the Thermal Infrared Imaging Camera for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Land surface temperature (LST) is one of the crucial factors that is important in various fields, including the study of climate change and the urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon. The existing LST was acquired using satellite imagery, but with the development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and thermal infrared (TIR) cameras, it has become possible to acquire LST with a spatial resolution of cm. The accuracy evaluation of the existing TIR camera for UAV was conducted by shooting vertically. However, in the case of a TIR camera, the temperature value may change because the emissivity varies depending on the viewing angle. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the accuracy of the TIR camera according to each angle. In this study, images were simultaneously acquired at 2–min intervals for each of the three research sites by TIR camera angles (70°, 80°, 90°). Then, the temperature difference by land cover was evaluated with respect to the LST obtained by laser thermometer and the LST obtained using UAV and TIR. As a result, the image taken at 80° showed the smallest difference compared with the value obtained with a laser thermometer, and the 70° image showed a large difference of 1–6 °C. In addition, in the case of the impervious surface, there was a large temperature difference by angle, and in the case of the water-permeable surface, there was no temperature difference by angle. Through this, 80° is best when acquiring TIR data, and if it is impossible to take images at 80°, it is considered good to acquire TIR images between 80° and 90°. To obtain more accurate LST, correction studies considering the external environment, camera attitude, and shooting height are needed in future studies.