Thermal–infrared emissivities of natural surfaces: improvements on the experimental set-up and new measurements

Ground measurements of thermal infrared emissivities of terrestrial surfaces are required to derive accurate temperatures from radiometric measurements, and also to apply and validate emissivity models using satellite sensor observations. This paper focuses on the demanding aspects that are involved in the field measurement of emissivity using the box method and a hand-held radiometer. Measuring emissivities in field conditions can be hampered by external factors such as wind and solar irradiance. This can increase the time spent on the field campaign but, most importantly, it can cause no-sense fluctuations between consecutive observations. Here we propose original developments for the exp…