Extreme thermal episodes analyzed with MODIS products during the boreal winter (2000-2016)

Abstract

The beginning of the XXI century is characterized by the intensification of the existing global warming situation and for a series of drastic global meteorological events. Particularly, during the winter season a series of extreme temperature episodes affecting large areas of the northern hemisphere have been produced. In this paper, these episodes are studied by analyzing the thermal anomalies spatial distribution and temporal evolution in the period 2001-2016 from Land Surface Temperature (LST) products obtained from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor. The study regions considered in this investigation are eight of the northern hemisphere. The results obtained for the heating and cooling episodes do not reveal an important discrepancy, however, an increase in the area affected by heating versus cooling is observed.

Keywords

• Episodios térmicos extremos
• temperatura superficie terrestre (TST)
• MODIS
• hemisferio norte
• calentamiento global