Temporal stability of a new 40-year daily AVHRR land surface temperature dataset for the pan-Arctic region

Abstract. Land surface temperature (LST) has gained increased attention in cryospheric research. While various global satellite LST products are available, none of them is specially designed for the pan-Arctic region. Based on the recently published EUMETSAT Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) fundamental data record (FDR), a new LST product (1981–2021) with daily resolution is developed for the pan-Arctic region. Validation shows good accuracy with an average mean absolute error (MAE) of 1.71 K and a MAE range of 0.62–3.07 K against in situ LST data from the Surface Radiation Budget (SURFRAD) network and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) sites. Long-term stability, a strong requirement for trend analysis, is assessed by comparing LST with air temperatures from ERA5-Land (T2M) and air temperature data from the EUSTACE (https://www.eustaceproject.org, last access: 17 December 2024) global station dataset. Long-term stability might not be fulfilled mainly due to the orbit drift of the NOAA satellites. Therefore, the analysis is split into two periods: the arctic winter months, which are unaffected by solar illumination and, therefore, orbital drift, and the summer months. The analysis for the winter months results in correlation values (r) of 0.44–0.83, whereas for the summer months (r) values range between 0.37–0.84. Analysis of anomaly differences revealed instabilities for the summer months at a few stations. The same stability analysis for the winter months revealed only one station with instabilities in comparison to station air temperature. Discrepancies between the temperature anomalies recorded at the stations and ERA5-Land T2M were also found. This highlights the limited influence of orbital drift on the LST product, with the winter months presenting good stability across all stations, which makes these data a valuable source for studying LST changes in the pan-Arctic region over the last 40 years. This study concludes by presenting LST trend maps (1981–2021) for the entire region, revealing distinct warming and cooling patterns.