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Full catalog/modis-terra-mod11a1
modis-terra-mod11a1·dataset

Daily land surface temperature, 1 km (Terra)

MODIS Terra Land Surface Temperature Emissivity Daily L3 Global 1km
land ESA ESA Copernicus active
In plain English

What it measures. It reports how warm the ground surface is each day, day and night, at 1-kilometer resolution from clear-sky views. It also includes how efficiently surfaces emit heat for two thermal bands.

How it's made. Generated by ESA Copernicus from NASA's MODIS instrument on Terra, derived from clear-sky thermal observations and delivered as a daily Level-3 grid.

How & where you'd use it. Used for heatwave tracking, drought and crop-stress monitoring, urban heat studies, and comparing day-night temperature swings.

What's measured

MODISTerraNASASatelliteGlobalLand Surface TemperatureLSTEmissivityThermal1kmMOD11A1

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2000-02-28 → ongoing
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90

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 MODIS Terra MOD11A1 Version 6.1 product provides daily per-pixel Land Surface Temperature and Emissivity (LST&E) at 1 km spatial resolution. The data are generated from the MOD11_L2 swath product and distributed on a 1,200 × 1,200 km grid. Pixel temperature values are derived from clear-sky observations; at latitudes above 30°, where multiple clear-sky observations may occur within a day, the pixel value represents the average of all qualifying measurements. The product includes both daytime and nighttime surface temperature bands, along with quality control layers, observation times, view zenith angles, clear-sky coverage information, and emissivity estimates for MODIS Bands 31 and 32 derived from land cover types.

Get the data

copernicus_access.py
# ESA Copernicus Data Space — open STAC API (free account)
from pystac_client import Client

cat = Client.open("https://stac.dataspace.copernicus.eu/v1")
search = cat.search(
    collections=["modis-terra-mod11a1"],   # add _cog or _nc for a format variant
    bbox=(-10, 35, 30, 60),             # your area (W,S,E,N)
    datetime="2024-01-01/2024-12-31",
)
items = list(search.items())            # then read assets with rioxarray / xarray
Browsing the Copernicus STAC is open; downloading bytes needs a free Copernicus Data Space account.