The invention provides a method and a system for inverting urban surface temperatures. The method comprises the steps of S1, obtaining the TM image data of a region to be tested, S2, preprocessing the TM image data, including atmospheric correction, geometric correction, image enhancement and image clipping, S3, converting the pixel gray level value of the thermal infrared band in the preprocessed TM image data into corresponding radiance, S4, obtaining corresponding a radiation brightness temperature according to the radiance, and S5, converting the radiation brightness temperature into the surface temperature by use of the emissivity of different surface features, wherein the TM image data are multi-band scanning image data obtained by use of an optical earth land satellite Landsat-5 thematic charting instrument TM. The method can be widely applied to monitoring the urban thermal environment, and has the advantages of low cost, high accuracy and wide application range.