Evaluation of Factors Influencing Changes in Land Surface Temperature at Gas Flaring Sites in the Niger Delta, Nigeria.

Abstract

This research investigates factors that can affect changes in Land Surface Temperature (LST) retrieved from satellites data at 11 gas flaring sites in Rivers State, Nigeria. 8 Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM), 22 Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM), and 4 Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager and Thermal Infrared Sensor (OLI-TIRS) data from 14/12/1984 to 05/02/2022 with  3  cloud cover were used. LST was derived from the atmospherically corrected thermal band; difference between vegetation LST at 60m from the flare stack and vegetation LST at 450m from the flare stack was computed as (LST_60-450m). Available factors that can affect LST_60-450m) considered are size of the facility, height of the flare stack and time. Pairwise linear regression analysis was applied to the relationship between each of the factor considered and LST_60-450m) in North, East, South, and West directions with   0.01 to obtain r-values and p-values. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to analyze the relationships among multiple variables (x₁  month, x₂  size of the facility and x₃  stack height, y₁ LST_60-450mN) and y₂ LST_60-450mE). The results (r²  0.05, and p-value  0.016) show that only 5  of the variability in LST_60-450m) could be accounted for by the variables considered. From these results, it can be concluded that size of the facility, height of the flare stack and time could only accounted for 5  of the variability in LST_60-450m) at the flaring sites examined in the Niger Delta.