Exploitation of AATSR land surface temperature

The Advanced Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR) on board the sun-synchronous, polar orbiting satellite Envisat has provided land surface temperature (LST) products for nearly the past 10 years. Such data can be used to improve our ability to monitor and to understand land surface and climate change processes, such as desertification, urbanization, deforestation and land/atmosphere coupling. Indeed, although April 2012 marked the final data retrieved from this seminal mission the near 10-year archive has provided an important dataset of high quality LST which has helped to enhance our understanding of the Earth System.