From Land Surface Temperature (LST) maps, derivable indicators include temperature minima and maxima at annual, monthly, and decadal periods, the identification of late frost periods, unusual hot summers, growing degree days, spring temperature increase and autumnal temperature decrease (Neteler, 2005; Rizzoli et al., 2007; Carpi et al., 2008).
While the raw data are of limited interest to landscape epidemiological applications, time series aggregation of the new sensor data leads to a new quality of ecological indicators which have not been available earlier. A special challenge is the complex terrain as it dominates the Southern Alps in Italy. It requires special attention to data processing and outlier detection.

MODIS LST on Aqua satellite base filtered
MODIS LST (7 Apr 2006, 13:30) satellite with QA map and outlier detection applied:
cirrus cloud fields remain undetected

MODIS LST on Aqua satellite twice filtered
MODIS LST (7 Apr 2006, 13:30) satellite with second outlier detection applied:
cirrus cloud fields removed

MODIS LST on Aqua satellite reconstructed
MODIS LST (7 Apr 2006, 13:30) satellite with reinterpolated with
elevation as additional variable and exposition correction (preliminary results)

Temperature time series from MODIS LST

We use above method to produce reconstructed time series from MODIS LST. Here some preliminary results:

MODIS LST time series at Arco (TN), Italy

Raw (blue) and reconstructed (red) MODIS LST time at Arco (TN), Italy (click to enlarge)

To better understand the quality of the reconstruction, see below a close-by meteorological station. The reconstruction above is completely independent from the meteorological data and only based on remote sensing data.

Tmin from meteorological station at Arco (TN), Italy

Tmin at 2m from meteorological station at Arco (TN), Italy (click to enlarge)

The developed method will be published in detail in 2010.

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