MYD11B1 V006: Daily Land Surface Temperature from MODIS/Aqua

MODIS/Aqua MYD11B1 Version 6 provides daily, per-pixel Land Surface Temperature and Emissivity (LST&E) data on a global 6km grid. Each data granule includes daytime and nighttime observations of LST, quality assessments, observation times, view angles, clear-sky counts, and emissivity values for multiple spectral bands. This product was decommissioned in July 2023, with users directed to the updated Version 6.1.

Use Cases

• Monitoring urban heat island intensity based on daily land surface temperature layers.
• Modeling surface energy fluxes using combined LST and emissivity data from multiple spectral bands.
• Assessing drought conditions through temporal analysis of thermal anomalies.
• Validating climate models with global, gridded temperature observations.
• Studying diurnal temperature cycles using separate day and night LST layers.

Strengths

• Provides data on a consistent global 6km grid with a daily temporal resolution.
• Includes multiple data layers such as LST, quality control, view angles, and emissivities for bands 20, 22, 23, 29, 31, and 32.
• Algorithm improvements in Version 6 removed cloud-contaminated LSTs and updated coefficients for better performance in arid regions.

Limitations

• The dataset is deprecated (decommissioned July 31, 2023), indicating it is not the current operational version.
• Key metadata such as row count, column names, and precise temporal coverage are unavailable from the provided sources.
• Pixel size of 5600 meters may be too coarse for local-scale applications.

Provenance

Source

NASA LPCLOUD, derived from the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing using a split-window algorithm applied to MODIS thermal infrared bands.

Freshness

Last updated metadata dates range from 2023-02-26 to 2026-04-10, but the underlying data product is deprecated.

Geography

Global coverage, delivered in 1200km x 1200km tiles.