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  1. Home
  2. Essential Climate Variables
  3. Land Surface Temperature

Download shortened print version of ECV factsheet (pdf) here.


Data Sources

ECV Products and Requirements


Land Surface Temperature

The Land Surface Temperature (LST) is the skin temperature of ground. It is mainly a product of albedo, the vegetation cover and the soil moisture. From a climate perspective, LST is important for evaluating land surface and land-atmosphere exchange processes, constraining surface energy budgets and model parameters, and providing observations of surface temperature change both globally and in key regions.
  Domain: Terrestrial
  Subdomain: Biology
  Scientific Area: Energy and temperature
  ECV Steward: Darren Ghent
  Products:  Maps of land surface temperature

 


Consistency with Air Temperature ECV

Figure: Time series of globally averaged monthly anomalies (°C) for the ESA DUE GlobTemperature LST Climate Data Record (CDR) and CRUTEM4 surface air temperature data set.

Source: Good, E. J., Ghent, D., Bulgin, C., and Remedios, J. (2017), A spatiotemporal analysis of the relationship between near-surface air temperature and satellite land surface temperatures using 17 years of data from the ATSR series, J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 122, 9185–9210.

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