Daily Global Land Surface Temperature and Emissivity from MODIS Aqua

Daily global land surface temperature and 3-band emissivity data at 1km resolution, produced from MODIS/Aqua satellite observations. The dataset is generated by NASA's LPCLOUD using a physics-based Temperature/Emissivity Separation algorithm on thermal infrared bands. It represents a Collection 6.1 product with known differences from heritage MODIS LST datasets.

Use Cases

• Analyze daily land surface temperature patterns and anomalies for climate monitoring.
• Study surface emissivity across three spectral bands (29, 31, 32) for material classification.
• Filter data using the provided quality control (QC) Science Dataset to identify reliable retrievals.
• Investigate view zenith angle and time of observation Science Datasets for solar geometry effects.
• Detect extreme thermal events like fires by analyzing high-temperature outliers retained in the data.

Strengths

• Daily temporal resolution provides frequent surface observations.
• Global spatial coverage at 1km Sinusoidal grid resolution.
• Algorithm uses a physics-based TES method to retrieve LST and emissivity simultaneously.
• Includes seven Science Datasets (SDS) such as QC, emissivity bands, view angle, and observation time.

Limitations

• Contains known high-temperature outliers, especially over desert regions, requiring user QC filtering.
• Retrievals can be negatively impacted by undetected cloud and dust, potentially causing overestimated temperatures.
• Only observations with coverage above a 15% threshold are averaged for the final LST value.

Provenance

Source

NASA LPCLOUD, MODIS/Aqua satellite.

Collection Method

Produced from daytime Level 2 Gridded (L2G) intermediate products, averaged from cloud-free observations with good accuracy.

Freshness

Daily

Geography

Global