MODIS Daily Land Surface Temperature Estimates in Google Earth Engine as an Aid in Geothermal Energy Siting

Abstract

The four-samples-per-day MODIS thermal infrared observations from the EOS Terra and Aqua satellite systems have been ingested into the Google Earth Engine platform. This means that a potent dataset -- with coverage from satellites of orbital inclination 98.1 degrees, deployed since the year 2000, and roughly 1km resolution -- is easily available. This is a massive dataset of many tens to hundreds of terabytes, available spinning online for the first time in a platform that allows easy computation using Google servers. For the geothermal community, simple Temperature statistics such as the Mean Annual Surface Temperature (e.g. Horowitz and Regenauer-Lieb, 2009) or daily T range statistics can then be calculated for any region covered by data. Having such statistics easily available should be of aid in making siting decisions for geothermal electrical generation or direct use applications. Examples of such calculations will be shown (hopefully live) at the meeting.