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Full catalog/LEOLSTCMG30
LEOLSTCMG30·v001·dataset

Monthly land surface temperature worldwide

Low Earth Orbit Land Surface Temperature Monthly Global Gridded V001
land NASA LPCLOUD Level 2 HDF-EOS5
In plain English

What it measures. Monthly average land surface temperature for the whole globe, plus error estimates for both daytime and nighttime values.

How it's made. Made by combining and regridding monthly land-temperature products from the MODIS and VIIRS instruments on the Aqua and Suomi-NPP satellites onto climate-friendly grids.

How & where you'd use it. Supports climate research and modeling that needs consistent global land temperatures over 2002-2020. Note: in this version the nighttime error values were filled with zeros and should not be used.

What's measured

LAND SURFACE › SURFACE THERMAL PROPERTIES › LAND SURFACE TEMPERATURE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2002-08-01 → 2020-12-31
  • Measured byAqua (MODIS) · Suomi-NPP (VIIRS)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsHDF-EOS5
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

The NASA Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) LEOLSTCMG30 version 1 Climate Modeling Grid (CMG) product provides Land Surface Temperature (LST) derived from the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite data record from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instruments as well as LST error estimates for both day and night. The product will include global LST produced on CMG at monthly timesteps from 2002 to 2020. The MEaSUREs LEOLST product is generated by regridding the monthly LST CMG products from MODIS ([MYD21C3](https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MYD21C3.061)) and VIIRS ([VNP21C3](https://doi.org/10.5067/VIIRS/VNP21C3.002)). The product will be available on 0.25, 0.5, and 1 degree optimized climate grids with well characterized per-pixel uncertainties. A low-resolution browse is also available showing LST as an RGB (red, green, blue) image in PNG format. Known Issues * Users should be aware that in v001 of the Low Earth Orbit Land Surface Temperature Monthly Global Gridded product (LEOLSTCMG30) the nighttime LST error estimates (LST_Night_err_*) in the one degree, half degree, and quarter degree SDS layers were erroneously filled with zero values, and should not be used for any scientific data analyses.

Get the data

leolstcmg30_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="LEOLSTCMG30",
    version="001",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from LPCLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.