MODIS/Terra: Monthly Global Land Surface Temperature at 0.05-Degree Resolution

MODIS/Terra Version 6 data provides monthly Land Surface Temperature and Emissivity values in a 0.05-degree Climate Modeling Grid covering the entire globe. The product was decommissioned on July 31, 2023, and users are directed to the newer Version 6.1. It was produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and includes layers for daytime and nighttime observations, quality control, and emissivity from specific spectral bands.

Use Cases

• Modeling global climate patterns based on monthly composited land surface temperature.
• Analyzing surface thermal properties for different land cover types based on emissivity values from bands 20, 22, 23, 29, 31, and 32.
• Assessing data quality for time-series analysis using the included quality control layers.
• Studying diurnal temperature cycles using separate daytime and nighttime observation layers.

Strengths

• Provides global coverage with a 0.05-degree (approximately 5.6 km) spatial resolution grid.
• Includes multiple data layers such as LST, quality control, observation times, view angles, and clear-sky counts.
• Product improvements from previous versions include removal of cloud-contaminated data and algorithm tuning for desert regions.

Limitations

• This specific Version 6 product was decommissioned in July 2023, indicating it is not the current operational dataset.
• Production was discontinued in November 2022 due to significant loss of data retrieval, which may affect data completeness for that period.
• 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 MOD11C1 daily files from the MODIS/Terra satellite.

Time Range

Monthly intervals, but specific date range is not provided in the input.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 00:14:17.935784; freshness should be verified

Geography

Global coverage in a 7,200 column by 3,600 row Climate Modeling Grid.