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Full catalog/LEOLSTCMG30
LEOLSTCMG30·v002·dataset

How hot the land surface gets, multi-satellite (monthly)

Low Earth Orbit Land Surface Temperature Monthly Global Gridded V002
land NASA LPCLOUD Level 2 active HDF-EOS5
In plain English

What it measures. Monthly global maps of how hot the land surface gets (its actual skin temperature), separately for day and night, with per-pixel error estimates. Available at several grid resolutions.

How it's made. Created by combining and regridding land-surface-temperature products from MODIS on Aqua and VIIRS on Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20 into a consistent monthly climate grid.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for climate research, mapping heat patterns, and studying how land temperatures change across regions and seasons.

What's measured

LAND SURFACE › SURFACE THERMAL PROPERTIES › LAND SURFACE TEMPERATURE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2002-08-01 → ongoing
  • Measured byAqua (MODIS) · Suomi-NPP (VIIRS) · NOAA-20 (VIIRS)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsHDF-EOS5
  • StatusACTIVE

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 2 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 MEaSUREs LEOLST product is generated by regridding the monthly CMG products from Aqua MODIS ([MYD21C3](https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MYD21C3.061)) and VIIRS ([VNP21C3](https://doi.org/10.5067/VIIRS/VNP21C3.002) and [VJ121](https://doi.org/10.5067/VIIRS/VJ121.002)). The product is 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.

Get the data

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

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="LEOLSTCMG30",
    version="002",
    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.