Evaluation of four new land surface temperature (LST) products in the U.S. Corn Belt: ECOSTRESS, GOES-R, Landsat, and Sentinel-3

This study evaluated both the new satellite LST products including ECOSTRESS, GOES-R, Landsat Provisional and Sentinel-3, and several mainstream LST products including MOD11A1, MYD11A1, MYD21A1 and VNP21A1 for agricultural landscapes in the U.S. Corn Belt. The evaluation was benchmarked on in-situ measurements from 11 SURFRAD or eddy covariance sites in the growing seasons of 2018 and 2019. Results showed that the nighttime and daytime biases of all LST products on different sites were generally within 2 C and 3 C, respectively. Regarding the daytime LST, the highest agreement with ground observations was achieved by ECOSTRESS with an overall absolute bias MYD11A1 MOD11A1 (0.37/day) > Sentinel-3 (0.26/day) > Landsat Provisional (0.12/day) > ECOSTRESS (0.07/day). Holistically considering factors of bias, RMSE and cloud-free temporal frequency of different LST products, MOD11A1 and MYD11A1 are relatively appropriate for agriculture-related applications.