Remote Sensing of the North American Laurentian Great Lakes' Surface Temperature

Abstract

The Great Lakes Surface Temperature (GLST) is the key to understanding the effects of climate change on the Great Lakes (GL). This study provides the first techniques to retrieve pixel-based GLST under all sky conditions by merging skin temperature derived from the MODIS Land Surface Temperature (MOD11L2) and the MODIS Cloud product (MOD06L2) from 6 July 2001 to 31 December 2014, resulting in 18,807 scenes in total 9373 (9434) scenes for MOD11L2 (MOD06L2). The pixel-based GLST under all sky conditions was well-correlated with the in situ observations (R2 = 0.9102) with a cool bias of -1.10 °C and a root mean square error (RMSE) of 1.39 °C. The study also presents the long-term trends of GLST. Contrary to expectations, it decreased slightly due to the impact of an anomalously cold winter in 2013-2014.