MODIS/Terra: Daily Land Surface Temperature and Emissivity at 1km Resolution

MODIS/Terra Land Surface Temperature and Emissivity (LST&E) swath data produced daily in five-minute increments. The product uses a physics-based algorithm to retrieve temperature and emissivity simultaneously from three thermal infrared bands at a nadir resolution of 1,000 meters. NASA produces this data, with the latest update noted in March 2026.

Use Cases

• Monitoring daily land surface temperature dynamics based on five-minute temporal increments.
• Analyzing spectral emissivity for different land cover types based on the three-band retrieval method.
• Studying extreme thermal events like fires or lava flows based on the algorithm's retention of high-temperature values.
• Investigating atmospheric correction under humid conditions based on the improved Water Vapor Scaling scheme.
• Comparing physics-based TES algorithm performance against split-window techniques based on the description of the MOD11 algorithm difference.

Strengths

• Data is produced daily with a high temporal resolution of five-minute increments.
• Spatial resolution is 1,000 meters at nadir, covering approximately 2,030 pixels along track and 1,354 pixels per line.
• Algorithm dynamically retrieves both land surface temperature and spectral emissivity simultaneously using a physics-based approach.

Limitations

• Known issue of extreme high temperature outliers, especially over desert regions, due to undetected cloud and dust.
• Contaminated pixels are retained in the output product, requiring users to apply Quality Control filtering.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Satellite acquisition from the MODIS/Terra sensor, processed using the MOD21 Land Surface Temperature and Emissivity algorithm.

Time Range

Daily production.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 23:42:18.852503; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global swath coverage.