Aqua MODIS 8-Day Land Surface Temperature and Emissivity Grid

MYD11A2 Version 6 provides 8-day composite averages of Land Surface Temperature and Emissivity (LST&E) derived from the MODIS sensor aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. The dataset offers a 1-kilometer spatial resolution within a 1200x1200 km grid, accompanied by quality control flags, observation times, view angles, and clear-sky coverage data. This version has been decommissioned as of July 31, 2023, with users directed to the updated MYD11A2 Version 6.1 product.

Use Cases

• Monitoring urban heat island effects using daytime and nighttime land surface temperature bands.
• Analyzing surface emissivity for energy balance models using bands 31 and 32 emissivity values.
• Assessing data quality for climate studies with the provided per-pixel quality control assessments.
• Studying seasonal and interannual land surface temperature variability across 8-day composite periods.
• Validating land surface models using the associated view zenith angles and clear-sky coverage information.

Strengths

• Provides a consistent 8-day composite period aligned with the exact ground track repeat of the Terra and Aqua satellite platforms.
• Algorithm improvements include removal of cloud-contaminated LSTs and an updated coefficient look-up table based on wide-ranging simulation data.
• Includes multiple ancillary data layers such as quality control, observation times, and view angles alongside the core temperature data.

Limitations

• This specific version (V006) is decommissioned, creating a conflict as one platform lists a future 'last updated' date of 2026-03-12 while another indicates decommissioning in 2023.
• No specific row count, file size, or complete column list is provided by the available sources.

Provenance

Source

NASA's Aqua satellite Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor.

Collection Method

Per-pixel averages of MYD11A1 LST data collected over 8-day periods, processed with a split-window algorithm.

Time Range

Coverage corresponds to the Aqua MODIS mission lifetime prior to product decommissioning in July 2023.

Freshness

2026-03 12 23:50:28.084556 (noted conflict: dataset is decommissioned as of 2023-07-31)

Geography

Global coverage in a 1km Sinusoidal (SIN) grid projection.