Estimation of Surface Air Temperature from MODIS High Resolution Land Surface Temperature over Northern China

Surface air temperature is a critical variable to describe energy and water cycle of the Earth-atmosphere system and is a key input element for hydrology and land surface models. It is a very important variable in agriculture application and climate change studies. Traditionally, surface air temperatures are obtained from meteorology stations at 2 meter above ground. In general, meteorology stations are distributed sparsely that is not enough for higher resolution model. Recent studies have shown that surface air minimum/maximum temperatures estimated from MODIS Land Surface Temperature (LST) are statistical meaningful in some regions. In this study, we have examined statistical relationship between surface air temperatures and MODIS LST over the Northern China at selected locations. Results indicate that the statistical significance of the estimations depends on the surface type and conditions. As part of the Monsoon Asia Integrated Regional Study (MAIRS) project, NASA GES DISC has processed standard 8-day 1km MODIS product by mosaicing and re-projecting 10x10 degree tiled data files (MOD11A2 and MYD11A2) over the entire monsoon Asia region (60-150E, 0-60N) and made the data accessible through the online visualization and analysis system, Giovanni.