Estimating air temperature of an alpine meadow on the Northern Tibetan Plateau using MODIS land surface temperature

Meteorological data are scarce due to lack of meteorology stations in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau. This often results in an imprecise estimation of air temperature. A linear estimation of air temperature of an alpine meadow on Northern Tibetan Plateau at heights of 1.5 m–2.1 m by using MODIS land surface temperature (LST) data was conducted in this study. The results showed that linear estimation of daily maximum and daytime mean air temperatures from MODIS LST data were not accurate enough (P > 0.01, R2 < 0.10) during the growing season. In contrast, the linear relationships between daily maximum and daytime mean air temperature and MODIS LST during the non-growing season were both significant (P < 0.01, R2 > 0.40). MODIS LST data were accurate enough to linearly estimate daily minimum and nighttime mean air temperatures (P < 0.01, R2 > 0.55). Moreover, derived LST from MODIS/Terra platform (MOD11A2) had higher accuracies than derived LST from MODIS/Aqua platform (MYD11A2) in linearly estimating air temperatures mentioned above.