GEOLST4KHR: Hourly Land Surface Temperature for the Americas

NASA MEaSUREs GEOLST4KHR version 2 provides hourly land surface temperature data at a 4 km resolution for North and South America. It is derived from GOES 8 and 10-17 satellite observations spanning the years 2000 through 2023. The dataset includes layers for land surface temperature, temperature error, cloud mask, latitude, and longitude.

Use Cases

• Monitoring diurnal land surface temperature cycles based on hourly increments.
• Analyzing long-term temperature trends over the Americas using data from 2000-2023.
• Applying cloud masking algorithms to filter satellite observations for clear-sky analysis.
• Validating climate and weather models with satellite-derived surface temperature estimates.

Strengths

• Provides a long-term, consistent record spanning 24 years (2000-2023).
• Offers high temporal resolution with data produced daily in hourly increments.
• Covers a broad geographic area encompassing both North and South America.
• Includes error estimates and cloud mask layers for data quality assessment.

Limitations

• Spatial resolution is coarse at 4,000 meters, limiting fine-scale analysis.
• Metadata completeness is low; specific column names, row counts, and exact file sizes are not provided.
• Conflicting last-updated dates exist between sources (2026-04-10 vs. 2024-01-01).

Provenance

Source

NASA Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) program, produced by LPCLOUD.

Collection Method

Generated using the MERRA-2/RTTOV Single-Channel CAMEL algorithm applied to data from GOES 8 and 10-17 satellites.

Time Range

2000 through 2023

Freshness

2026-04-10 03:20:19.635059

Geography

North and South America