10-day Composites of MSG Land Surface Temperature: Thermal Surface Parameters

Abstract:
Derived LST (DLST; LSA-003) provide a synthesis of the Meteosat Land Surface Temperature (MLST; LSA-001) products within a 10 day interval. The DLST consist of two sub-products: LSA-003A, the maximum and median MLST composites over the 10-day interval, and LSA-003B, a set of so-called Thermal Surface Parameters (TSP; LSA-003B), which are obtained by fitting a diurnal temperature cycle model to the corresponding MLST composites. Like the well-known Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), MLST composites are simple subsets of the input quantity, i.e. the LSA-003A products. Temporal composites usually have considerably fewer missing data and are spatially more continuous than the input data. The LSA-003B sub-product contains sets of physically meaningful model parameters, i.e. the TSP, which summarize the thermal behaviour of the land surface for the 10 day interval and require about 10 times less storage space than the composites. TSP have physical meaning and direct relevance to (land surface) applications, e.g. minimum temperature (i.e. around sunrise), temperature amplitude and time of maximum temperature.