Land surface temperature (LST) plays a crucial role in energy balance of the earth system. Retrieving LST from the lunar can outperform artificial earth satellite. But there are no datasets acquired for earth observation from the lunar, yet. In order to obtain the thermal infrared images of the earth, used for LST retrieval, from the lunar, it is necessary to calculate the land surface thermal infrared irradiance at the lunar orbit. In this paper, a simulation method is presented to calculate the lunar-based irradiance arrived at the surface of the sensor based on the atmospheric radiation transfer software MODTRAN4.0 using MODIS data. The simulated irradiance arrived at sensors can reach 10 −4  W/cm 2  with appropriate parameters. The value of the simulated irradiance can reached the same level with that of the artificial earth satellites. The results indicate that it is possible to observe the earth from the lunar at thermal infrared bands.
['Chenwei Nie', 'Jingjuan Liao', 'Guozhuang Shen']
A simulation method for thermal infrared irradiance of Land surface from the Lunar