Estimation of Diurnal Cycle of Land Surface Temperature at High Temporal and Spatial Resolution from Clear-Sky MODIS Data

Remote Sensing

Si-Bo Duan²  Zhao-Liang Li¹  Bo-Hui Tang²  Hua Wu²  Ronglin Tang²  Yuyun Bi¹ 

[1] Key Laboratory of Agri-Informatics, Ministry of Agriculture/Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China; E-Mail:;State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environment Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; E-Mails:

关键词: land surface temperature (LST);    diurnal temperature cycle (DTC);    MODIS;    MSG-SEVIRI;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs6043247

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

The diurnal cycle of land surface temperature (LST) is an important element of the climate system. Geostationary satellites can provide the diurnal cycle of LST with low spatial resolution and incomplete global coverage, which limits its applications in some studies. In this study, we propose a method to estimate the diurnal cycle of LST at high temporal and spatial resolution from clear-sky MODIS data. This method was evaluated using the MSG-SEVIRI-derived LSTs. The results indicate that this method fits the diurnal cycle of LST well, with root mean square error (RMSE) values less than 1 K for most pixels. Because MODIS provides at most four observations per day at a given location, this method was further evaluated using only four MSG-SEVIRI-derived LSTs corresponding to the MODIS overpass times (10:30, 13:30, 22:30, and 01:30 local solar time). The results show that the RMSE values using only four MSG-SEVIRI-derived LSTs are approximately two times larger than those using all LSTs. The spatial distribution of the modeled LSTs at the MODIS pixel scale is presented from 07:00 to 05:00 local solar time of the next day with an increment of 2 hours. The diurnal cycle of the modeled LSTs describes the temporal evolution of the LSTs at the MODIS pixel scale.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland