Evaluating sources of an apparent cold bias in MODIS land surface temperatures in the St. Elias Mountains, Yukon, Canada

Abstract. Remote sensing data are a crucial tool for monitoring climatological changes and glacier response in areas inaccessible for in situ measurements. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land surface temperature (LST) product provides temperature data for remote glaciated areas where weather stations are sparse or absent, such as the St. Elias Mountains (Yukon, Canada). However, MODIS LSTs in the St. Elias Mountains have shown a cold bias relative to available weather station measurements, the source of which is unknown. Here, we show that the MODIS cold bias likely results from the occurrence of near-surface temperature inversions rather than from the MODIS sensor’s large footprint size or from poorly constrained snow emissivity values used in LST calculations. We find that a cold bias in remote sensing temperatures is present not only in MODIS LST products, but also in Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emissions Radiometer (ASTER) and Landsat surface temperature products, both of which have a much smaller footprint (90–120 m) than MODIS (1 km). In all three datasets, the cold bias was most pronounced in the winter (mean cold bias > 8 °C), and least pronounced in the spring and summer (mean cold bias