MODIS/Terra: 8-Day Global Land Surface Temperature and Emissivity at 0.05 Degrees

The MOD11C2 Version 6 product was decommissioned on July 31, 2023. It provided 8-day composite Land Surface Temperature and Emissivity (LST&E) values on a 0.05-degree global Climate Modeling Grid, derived from daily MODIS/Terra satellite observations. The dataset was produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and includes 17 layers for daytime and nighttime measurements.

Use Cases

• Modeling global climate patterns based on 8-day composite land surface temperature data.
• Analyzing surface emissivity variations for different land cover types based on bands 20, 22, 23, 29, 31, and 32.
• Studying diurnal temperature cycles using separate daytime and nighttime observation layers.
• Assessing data quality for thermal remote sensing applications using the included quality control layers.

Strengths

• Provides global coverage on a consistent 0.05-degree (approximately 5.6 km) Climate Modeling Grid.
• Includes 17 layers of data, such as LST, quality control, observation times, view angles, and clear-sky counts.
• Algorithm improvements from previous versions targeted performance in arid and semi-arid regions.

Limitations

• The dataset (Version 6) was officially decommissioned on July 31, 2023, and users are directed to a newer version.
• Production was discontinued on November 16, 2022, due to a significant loss of data retrieval.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Derived by compositing and averaging values from eight daily MOD11C1 files from the MODIS/Terra satellite.

Time Range

Coverage corresponds to the MODIS/Terra mission lifetime until product decommissioning.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 23:41:51.015507; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global, represented by a grid with 7,200 columns and 3,600 rows.