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.

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.

ECV Products and Requirements

These products and requirements reflect the Implementation Plan 2022 (GCOS-244).

The requirements are found in the complete 2022 ECVs Requirements document as well: ECV Land Surface Temperature.

Products			Land Surface Temperature (LST)		Soil Temperature
	*()**	Unit	Values	Unit	Values
Horizontal Resolution	G	km	< 1	km	50
	B		< 1		150
	T		1		139-278
Vertical Resolution	G			cm	0, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 180
	B				0, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100
	T				0, 5, 10, 20,
Temporal Resolution	G	h	< 1	h	3
	B		1		6
	T		6		24
Timeliness	G	d		h	3
	B		2		6
	T		30		48
Required Measurement Uncertainty (2-sigma)	G	K	< 1	K	0.1
	B		< 1		0.2
	T		< 1		0.2
Stability	G	K/decade	0.1
	B		0.2
	T		0.3

(*) Goal (G): an ideal requirement above which further improvements are not necessary. Breakthrough (B): an intermediate level between threshold and goal which, if achieved, would result in a significant improvement for the targeted application. The breakthrough value may also indicate the level at which specified uses within climate monitoring become possible. It may be appropriate to have different breakthrough values for different uses. Threshold (T): the minimum requirement to be met to ensure that data are useful.

Data sources

This list provides sources for openly accessible data sets with worldwide coverage for which metadata is available. It is curated by the respective GCOS ECV Steward(s). The list does not claim to be complete. Anyone with a suitable dataset who wishes it to be added to this list should contact the abombelliwmo [dot] int (GCOS Secretariat).

Copernicus Global Land Service providing bio-geophysical products of global land surface
ESA DUE GlobTemperature
CEOS Working Group on Calibration and Validation Land Product, Validation Subgroup
Satellite ECV Inventory by the CEOS/CGMS Working Group on Climate (WGClimate)

Domain:

Land

Subdomain:

Biology

Scientific Area:

Energy and temperature

ECV Steward:

Darren Ghent (for LST)

Products:

Land surface temperature; Soil temperature