Reconstruction of All-Weather Daytime and Nighttime MODIS Aqua-Terra Land Surface Temperature Products Using an XGBoost Approach

Generating spatiotemporally continuous land surface temperature (LST) data is in great demand for hydrology, meteorology, ecology, environmental studies, etc. However, the thermal infrared (TIR)-based LST measurements are prone to cloud contamination with missing pixels. To repair the missing pixels, a new XGBoost-based linking approach for reconstructing daytime and nighttime Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) LST measurements was introduced. The instantaneous solar radiation and two soil-related predictors from China Data Assimilation System (CLDAS) 0.0625 & DEG;/1-h data were selected as the linking variables to depict the relationship with instantaneous MODIS LST data. Other land surface properties, including two vegetation indices, the water index, the surface albedo, and topographic parameters, were also used as the predictor variables. The XGBoost method was used to fit an LST linking model by the training datasets from clear-sky pixels and was then applied to the MODIS Aqua-Terra LSTs during summer time (June to August) in 2017 and 2018 across China. The recovered LST data was further rectified with the Savitzky-Golay (SG) filtering method. The results showed the distribution of the reconstructed LSTs present a reasonable pattern for different land-cover types and topography. The evaluation results using in situ longwave radiation measurements showed the RMSE varies from 3.91 K to 5.53 K for the cloud-free pixels and from 4.42 K to 4.97 K for the cloud-covered pixels. In addition, the reconstructed LST products correlated well with CLDAS LST data with similar LST spatial patterns. The variable importance analysis revealed that the two soil-related predictors and the elevation variable are key parameters due to their great contribution to the XGBoost model performance.

Automated summary

This study introduced a new XGBoost-based linking approach for reconstructing MODIS daytime and nighttime LST measurements, and applied it across China. The results showed that using various land surface properties as predictor variables, combined with the XGBoost method, can effectively recover LST data with good consistency with in situ measurements and CLDAS data.