MODIS ET (MOD16)
Gov-Public
Global actual ET from MODIS, 500m, 8-day/monthly/annual — a Penman-Monteith water-balance term, ready-made.
MODIS LST
Active1km daily/8-day land surface temperature from MODIS — the standard thermal input for energy-balance ET and snowmelt.
by NASA / LP DAAC
- Pricing
- Gov-Public
- License
- US Government (public domain)
- Commercial use
- Permitted
- Ecosystem
- Google Earth Engine, Python, GDAL
- Platform
- Windows, macOS, Linux
About MODIS LST
MODIS Land Surface Temperature (MOD11A1/A2 from Terra, MYD11A1/A2 from Aqua) delivers daily and 8-day composite thermal grids at 1km resolution globally, derived from the satellites' thermal infrared bands, freely distributed through LP DAAC. Twice-daily overpasses from the Terra/Aqua pair capture both morning and afternoon surface temperature.
It is the standard thermal input to energy-balance evapotranspiration models (SSEBop, METRIC-style approaches) and snowmelt-timing analysis wherever a distributed temperature field beats a handful of station records.
Where it fits in the workflow
TerrainCatchmentRainfallRunoffRoutingHydraulicsMappingReporting
Appears in collections
- Satellite Data for Hydrology & Water Engineering
The satellite and reanalysis datasets H&H engineers actually reach for — DEM to GRACE.
Alternatives to MODIS LST
Ranked by the topics, categories and workflow stages they share with MODIS LST.
SSEBop
Gov-Public
USGS operational ET at Landsat resolution — 30m actual evapotranspiration for water-rights and irrigation accounting.
MODIS Snow Cover
Gov-Public
500m daily/8-day global snow-cover extent from MODIS — the standard optical snow product for basin-scale tracking.
SMAP
Gov-Public
NASA's L-band radiometer soil moisture mission — 9km/36km near-surface moisture, daily, since 2015.
Google Earth Engine
Freemium
Planetary-scale geospatial analysis in the cloud — the data catalogue and compute behind modern water remote sensing.
Microsoft Planetary Computer
Freemium
A STAC API and Jupyter environment over petabytes of satellite data — Sentinel, Landsat, MODIS, ERA5, CHIRPS and more.