MOD21A1D.061 Terra Land Surface Temperature and 3-Band Emissivity Daily Global 1km

Dataset Availability

2000-02-24T00:00:00Z–2025-04-19T00:00:00Z

Dataset Provider

NASA LP DAAC at the USGS EROS Center

Earth Engine Snippet

ee.ImageCollection("MODIS/061/MOD21A1D")

Cadence

1 Day

Tags

climate daily emissivity global lst nasa surface-temperature terra usgs

Description

The MOD21A1D dataset is produced daily from daytime Level 2 Gridded (L2G) intermediate LST products at a spatial resolution of 1,000 meters. The L2G process maps the daily MOD21 swath granules onto a sinusoidal MODIS grid and stores all observations falling over a gridded cell for a given day. The MOD21A1 algorithm sorts through these observations for each cell and estimates the final LST value as an average from all observations that are cloud free and have good LST&E accuracies. The daytime average is weighted by the observation coverage for that cell. Only observations having an observation coverage greater than a 15% threshold are considered. The MOD21A1D product contains the calculated LST as well as quality control, the three emissivity bands, view zenith angle, and time of observation.

Documentation:

• User's Guide

• Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document (ATBD)

• General Documentation

Bands

Pixel Size
1000 meters

Bands

Name	Units	Min	Max	Scale	Offset	Description
LST_1KM	K	7500	65535	0.02		Land Surface Temperature
QC						Quality Control
Bitmask for QC Bits 0-1: Mandatory QA flags 0: Pixel produced, good quality, no further QA info necessary 1: Pixel produced, nominal quality. 2: Pixel not produced due to cloud 3: Pixel not produced due to reasons other than cloud Bits 2-3: Data quality flag 0: Good data quality of L1B bands 29, 31, 32 1: Missing pixel 2: Fairly calibrated 3: Poorly calibrated, TES processing skipped Bits 4-5: Cloud Flag 0: Cloud free 1: Thin cirrus 2: Pixel within 2 pixels of nearest cloud 3: Cloudy pixel Bits 6-7: TES Iterations 0: =7 (Slow convergence) 1: 6 (Nominal) 2: 5 (Nominal) 3: <5 (Fast) Bits 8-9: Atmospheric Opacity 0: =3 (Warm, humid air; or cold land) 1: 0.2 - 0.3 (Nominal value) 2: 0.1 - 0.2 (Nominal value) 3: <0.1 (Dry, or high altitude pixel) Bits 10-11: Min-Max Difference(MMD). Difference between minimum and maximum emissivity for bands 29, 31, 32 0: 0.15 (Most silicate rocks) 1: 0.1 - 0.15 (Rocks, sand, some soils) 2: 0.03 - 0.1 (Mostly soils, mixed pixel) 3: <0.03 (Vegetation, snow, water, ice) Bits 12-13: Emissivity accuracy 0: 0.02 (Poor performance) 1: 0.015 - 0.02 (Marginal performance) 2: 0.01 - 0.015 (Good performance) 3: <0.01 (Excellent performance) Bits 14-15: LST accuracy 0: 2 K (Poor performance) 1: 1.5 - 2 K (Marginal performance) 2: 1 - 1.5 K (Good performance) 3: <1 K (Excellent performance)
Emis_29		0	255	0.002	0.49	Band 29 emissivity
Emis_31		1	255	0.002	0.49	Band 31 emissivity
Emis_32		1	255	0.002	0.49	Band 32 emissivity
View_Angle	deg	0	130		-65	MODIS view zenith angle
View_Time	h	0	240	0.1		Time of MODIS observation

Terms of Use

Terms of Use

MODIS data and products acquired through the LP DAAC have no restrictions on subsequent use, sale, or redistribution.

Citations

Citations:

• Please visit LP DAAC 'Citing Our Data' page for information on citing LP DAAC datasets.

DOIs

• https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MOD21A1D.061

Explore with Earth Engine

Important: Earth Engine is a platform for petabyte-scale scientific analysis and visualization of geospatial datasets, both for public benefit and for business and government users. Earth Engine is free to use for research, education, and nonprofit use. To get started, please register for Earth Engine access.

Code Editor (JavaScript)

var dataset = ee.ImageCollection('MODIS/061/MOD21A1D')
                  .filter(ee.Filter.date('2018-01-01', '2018-05-01'));
var landSurfaceTemperature = dataset.select('LST_1KM');
var landSurfaceTemperatureVis = {
  min: 216.0,
  max: 348.0,
  palette: [
    '040274', '040281', '0502a3', '0502b8', '0502ce', '0502e6',
    '0602ff', '235cb1', '307ef3', '269db1', '30c8e2', '32d3ef',
    '3be285', '3ff38f', '86e26f', '3ae237', 'b5e22e', 'd6e21f',
    'fff705', 'ffd611', 'ffb613', 'ff8b13', 'ff6e08', 'ff500d',
    'ff0000', 'de0101', 'c21301', 'a71001', '911003'
  ],
};
Map.setCenter(6.746, 46.529, 2);
Map.addLayer(
    landSurfaceTemperature, landSurfaceTemperatureVis,
    'Land Surface Temperature');

Open in Code Editor

MOD21A1D.061 Terra Land Surface Temperature and 3-Band Emissivity Daily Global 1km

The MOD21A1D dataset is produced daily from daytime Level 2 Gridded (L2G) intermediate LST products at a spatial resolution of 1,000 meters. The L2G process maps the daily MOD21 swath granules onto a sinusoidal MODIS grid and stores all observations falling over a gridded cell for a given day. The …

MODIS/061/MOD21A1D, climate,daily,emissivity,global,lst,nasa,surface-temperature,terra,usgs

2000-02-24T00:00:00Z/2025-04-19T00:00:00Z

-90 -180 90 180

Google Earth Engine

https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/datasets

• https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MOD21A1D.061
• https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MOD21A1D.061