MODIS Terra Land Surface Temperature and Emissivity Swath Data

Daily land surface temperature and emissivity data are produced in five-minute temporal increments of satellite acquisition. The swath data has a nadir resolution of 1,000 meters and is based on the ASTER Temperature/Emissivity Separation technique using MODIS thermal infrared bands 29, 31, and 32. This Version 6 product was decommissioned in July 2023, with forward processing discontinued after December 31, 2005.

Use Cases

• Modeling urban heat islands using retrieved land surface temperature values.
• Analyzing spectral emissivity in bands 29, 31, and 32 for surface material classification.
• Monitoring thermal anomalies like wildfires or volcanic activity from high-temperature outlier pixels.
• Applying quality control filtering to the data to mitigate contamination from undetected cloud and dust, especially over desert regions.

Strengths

• Daily production with five-minute temporal increments of acquisition.
• Nadir spatial resolution of 1,000 meters per pixel.
• Physics-based algorithm retrieves both temperature and spectral emissivity simultaneously.

Limitations

• Product version is obsolete, decommissioned as of July 2023.
• Known issues with extreme high-temperature outliers, particularly over desert regions like the Sahara.
• Data availability has a two-month latency after satellite acquisition.

Provenance

Source

NASA LPCLOUD via the MODIS/Terra satellite sensor.

Collection Method

Generated using the MOD21 Land Surface Temperature algorithm based on the ASTER TES technique and an improved Water Vapor Scaling atmospheric correction scheme.

Time Range

Historical coverage until forward processing ended on 2005-12-31.

Freshness

Forward processing discontinued on 2005-12-31; product is historical.

Geography

Global swath coverage from the Terra satellite's orbit.