Landfill surface temperature

Landfilling is a relatively low demanding and prevalent method of municipal solid waste (MSW) disposal in most European countries. According to current data (Waste Management Plan 2014, Kubal et al. 2021), more MSW is disposed of in landfills than is recycled in the Czech Republic. Landfilling raises a number of issues harmful for the environment (Kuraš et al. 2014, Vinti et al. 2021), such as discharge of leachate from the landfill body, release of methane (CH4) from the ground surface, and settling and instability of landfill body. The use of Earth observation methods has a high potential to perform accurate area analysis and advance in exploring and studying landfill sites. Landfill surface temperature can be an indicator, according to which we can potentially infer the course of biomethanation process and explore the relationship between landfill surface temperature and methane release on the surface. MSW landfills currently contribute around 20% of the European methane emissions (Malinauskaite et al. 2017). Methane is an important greenhouse gas which has around twenty-five times higher potential to warm up the atmosphere compared to CO2. On MSW landfill, when anaerobic conditions are established, a methane-producing bacteria begin to decompose the waste and generate methane. Methane should not escape from the sealed stage, but it often does. In addition, methane can be formed under the top layer of waste under favorable conditions for its formation, such as MSW humidity higher than 20- 30% and temperature 25-40 °C. Methane is a flammable gas, and methane hot-spots on the landfill surface are places of potential burning.