MODIS/Aqua Land Surface Temperature/3-Band Emissivity Daily L3 Global 1km SIN Grid Night V

Global land surface temperature and emissivity data produced daily from nighttime observations by NASA's MODIS/Aqua satellite. The dataset uses a physics-based Temperature/Emissivity Separation (TES) algorithm on thermal infrared bands to retrieve values, and is gridded onto a 1km sinusoidal projection. It is part of Collection 6.1, maintained by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, with a last update recorded in March 2026.

Use Cases

• Monitoring diurnal and seasonal land surface temperature cycles based on daily global coverage.
• Analyzing surface emissivity for material classification based on three retrieved emissivity bands.
• Studying urban heat island effects using the gridded 1km resolution data.
• Detecting thermal anomalies like fires or lava flows based on the algorithm's retention of high-temperature values.
• Assessing atmospheric correction under humid conditions based on the improved Water Vapor Scaling scheme.

Strengths

• Algorithm uses a physics-based Temperature/Emissivity Separation technique, differing from heritage split-window products.
• Product contains seven Science Datasets including LST, three emissivity bands, quality control, view angle, and observation time.
• Data is produced daily and gridded globally at a 1km spatial resolution.
• Atmospheric correction is stabilized for warm and humid conditions via a Water Vapor Scaling scheme.

Limitations

• Known issue of increased extreme high temperature outliers, especially over desert regions, requiring user-applied Quality Control filtering.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and total file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Produced daily from MODIS/Aqua Level 2 swath data, gridded and averaged onto a sinusoidal projection.

Time Range

Daily coverage.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 00:23:35.310503; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global.