Land Surface Temperature（LST）

widely recognized as one of the key indicators that influence the environment and ecological system

is involved in many land surface processes. It is regarded as an effective way to measure the LSTs at global and regional scales using the thermal sensors onboard satellite platforms. Many researchers have conducted studies and developed algorithms to retrieve LST from the thermal infrared imageries observed by sensors onboard different satellite platforms. For the sensors provided with one thermal band

such as Landsat TM /ETM +

CBERS

and HJ-1B

the single-channel（or mono-window） methods have been proposed as empirical models. However

the surface emissivity and atmospheric parameters（e. g.

water vapor content） that are not readily accessible to common users are indispensable when these empirical models are implemented. The quantitative applications of these methods will consequently be limited to some extent. To overcome this problem

a new approach called Multi-Temporal and Spatial Information-Based Single Channel（MTSC） is proposed

which is based on the spatial and temporal information obtained from multi-temporal images. The HJ-1B is considered as an example

owing to its frequent revisit. The preliminary results demonstrate that the HJ-1B surface temperature results retrieved by the MTSC method are spatially consistent with MODIS surface temperature products（both for land and sea surfaces）. Compared with the MODIS product

the LST is overestimated about 1 K and the sea surface temperature is overestimated about 0. 5 K for the HJ-1B. The HJ-1B results retrieved by the MTSC method show more details with spatial integrity. Finally

followed by the in-depth analyses and discussions

some possible ways to improve the MTSC method are also suggested

including determining the similar pixels

modifying the objective function for optimization

and initializing the parameters adaptively. The MTSC method could be more perfect in view of its retrieval accuracy and practicability for common users

given that these improvements are made.