NASA has released the land surface temperature for the winter of 2009-2010. The land surface temperature is not the same temperature that is recorded at weather stations. The weather stations measure the air temperature. Instead, the land surface temperature is an estimate of how hot are the desserts, the trees, the roads, the tops of buildings, etc.
The image to the right is for the month of February 2010. Areas in the image that are shaded in blue are up to 12 degrees Centigrade colder than average. Areas in the image that are shaded in red are up to 12 degrees Centigrade warmer than average. The average temperature is calculated over the 2000 to 2008 time period.
You can click through the link at the bottom to see the data for December, January, and February. All the images at the site are much larger and clearer than the one shown here on the right.
This series of maps of land surface temperature anomalies for Northern Hemisphere winter 2009-2010 is a case in point. Based on observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, the maps show how temperatures in December 2009 and January and February 2010 compared to the 2000-2008 averages for each month. Places where temperatures were up to 12 degrees Celsius colder than the average are blue, places that were near average are white, and places that were up to 12 degrees warmer than the 2000–2008 average are red.
NASA images created by Jesse Allen, using data obtained from the using data provided by the Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LPDAAC). Caption by Rebecca Lindsey.
via Temperature Anomalies, Winter 2009-2010 : Image of the Day.
