A Global Analysis of Land Surface Temperature Diurnal Cycle Using MODIS Observations

Abstract

Diurnal variations of land surface temperature (LST) play a vital role in a wide range of applications such as climate change assessment, land–atmosphere interactions, and heat-related health issues in urban regions. This study uses 15 years (2003–17) of daily observations of LST Collection 6 from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on board the Aqua and the Terra satellites. A spline interpolation method is used to estimate half-hourly global LST from the MODIS measurements. A preliminary assessment of interpolated LST with hourly ground-based observations over selected stations of North America shows bias and an error of less than 1 K. Results suggest that the present interpolation method is capable of capturing the diurnal variations of LST reasonably well for different land-cover types. The diurnal cycle of LST and time of occurrence of maximum temperature are computed from the spatially and temporally consistent interpolated diurnal LST data at a global scale. Regions with higher variability in the timing of maximum LST hours and diurnal amplitude are identified in this study. The global desert regions show generally small variability of the monthly mean diurnal LST range, whereas larger areas of the global land exhibit rather higher variability in the diurnal LST range during the study period. Moreover, the changes in diurnal temperature range for the study period are examined for distinct land-cover types. Analysis of the 15-yr time series of the diurnal LST record shows an overall decrease of 0.5 K in amplitude over the Northern Hemisphere. However, the diurnal LST range shows variant changes in the Southern Hemisphere.

Diurnal Cycle of Passive Microwave Brightness Temperatures over Land at a Global Scale

“…These ten land covers include (1) tropical/sub-tropical evergreen broad-leaved forest, (2) deciduous forest, (3) evergreen broad-leaved and needle-leaved forest, (4) Deciduous woodland, (5) sclerophyllous woodland and forest, (6) wooded and non-wooded grassland, ( 7) tundra and mossy bog, (8) boreal and xeromorphic shrubland, ( 9) non-vegetated desert, and (10) ice. These ten land cover types are termed LC01 to LC10 hereafter and their percentages of global land coverage are shown in Figure 1 [28]. These static ten broad land cover types have been used in several studies.…”

“…Spline functions and, more generally, piecewise polynomial functions are some of the most successful approximating functions for such applications. The spline interpolation method has been successfully applied to study the diurnal variations of infrared land surface temperature (LST) and passive microwave TBs [6,[28][29][30]. They combine ease of computational handling with great flexibility; therefore, they are particularly appropriate for the approximation of experimental data or design curve measurements.…”

Land surface temperature variability across India: a remote sensing satellite perspective

“…The equatorial crossing local times of the Terra satellite are about 10:30 and 22:30, whereas these are 01:30 and 13:30 for the Aqua satellite. As LST observations around 13:30 local time are closer to the daily maximum LST of a given location (Sharifnezhadazizi et al, 2019), LST observations from the Aqua MODIS were used in this study. The Aqua satellite, with six sensors onboard, was launched on May 4, 2002 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) with a goal to better understand the global water and energy budget (Parkinson, 2013).…”

“…LST measurements from the polar-orbiting satellites are generally used as reference for validating LST derived from the geostationary satellites over in-situ data sparse regions (Singh et al, 2016). LST estimates from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors onboard the polar-orbiting Aqua and Terra satellites have been widely used for various applications at global and regional scales (Li et al, 2013;Prakash et al, 2016Prakash et al, , 2018Deilami et al, 2018;Phan and Kappas, 2018;Sharifnezhadazizi et al, 2019).…”

MODIS-based land surface temperature for climate variability and change research: the tale of a typical semi-arid to arid environment

“…Validation of LST products derived from C6 MODIS thermal infrared data using in situ measurements was achieved over a widely distributed set of locations and time periods (Duan, Li, Wu, et al, 2018;Duan et al, 2019;Lu, Zhang, Wang, & Zhou, 2018;Wan, 2014). This collection incorporates improvements in retrieval algorithms and hence is more accurate than its predecessor Collection 5 (C5) LST products specifically over semi-arid and arid regions and also over bare soil areas (Sharifnezhadazizi, Norouzi, Prakash, Beale, & Khanbilvardi, 2019). Therefore, C6 MODIS LST products are ready to use in scientific applications.…”