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 (𝛿LST60-450m). Available factors that can affect (𝛿LST60-450m) considered are facility size, flare stack height and time. Pairwise linear regression analysis was applied to the relationship between each of the factor considered and (𝛿LST60-450m) in North, East, South, and West directions with 𝛼 = 0.01 to obtain r-values and p-values. Analysis of the relationships among multiple variables (x1 = month, x2 = facility size and x3 = stack height, y1 =(𝛿LST60-450mN) and y2 =(𝛿LST60-450mE) was carried out using multiple linear regression analysis. The results (r2 = 0.05, and p-value = 0.016) show that only 5 % of the variability in (𝛿LST60-450m) could be accounted for by the variables considered. From these results, it can be concluded that facility size, flare stack height and time could only account for 5 % of the variability in (𝛿LST60-450m) at the flaring sites examined.