Terra MODIS Land Surface Temperature and Emissivity Swath Data

MODIS/Terra satellite data provides daily land surface temperature and spectral emissivity retrievals in five-minute temporal increments. The swath covers approximately 2,030 pixels along track and 1,354 pixels per line at a 1,000-meter nadir resolution. This Level 2 product (V061) is produced by LPCLOUD using a physics-based algorithm distinct from heritage MODIS LST products.

Use Cases

• Monitor diurnal land surface temperature cycles using the five-minute acquisition increments.
• Retrieve spectral emissivity simultaneously from MODIS thermal infrared bands 29, 31, and 32 for surface material characterization.
• Analyze surface thermal anomalies, such as fires or lava flows, where the algorithm retains potentially high-temperature values.
• Apply Quality Control (QC) filtering to mitigate high-temperature outliers, particularly over desert regions like the Sahara.
• Compare temperature retrieval performance against the MOD11 split-window technique using the MOD21 Temperature/Emissivity Separation (TES) method.

Strengths

• Daily production with five-minute temporal increments provides high-frequency observation.
• Swath dimensions of approximately 2,030 by 1,354 pixels offer wide spatial coverage per acquisition.
• Algorithm uses a physics-based Temperature/Emissivity Separation (TES) technique to retrieve both LST and emissivity dynamically.
• Includes an improved Water Vapor Scaling (WVS) atmospheric correction for stability in warm, humid conditions.

Limitations

• Known increase in extreme high-temperature outliers in Version 6 and 6.1, especially over desert regions.
• Contaminated pixels from undetected cloud and dust are retained in output, requiring user-applied QC filtering.
• Lacks a dedicated dust flag in this version, which can lead to overestimated temperatures during dust outbreaks.

Provenance

Source

NASA Earthdata (LPCLOUD)

Collection Method

Processed from MODIS/Terra satellite observations using the MOD21 Land Surface Temperature and Emissivity (LST&E) algorithm.

Freshness

Daily

Geography

Global