Annual Cycle of the Land Surface Temperatures over East Asia in Connection with Agricultural Activities

By applying Harmonic Analysis of Time Series (HANTS) to the time series of the pixel-wise land surface temperature (LST) from the Tera and Aqua satellite observations, we decomposed its annual cycle into the frequency components and examined their horizontal distribution. The frequency 1 year^-1 reflected the mean annual change of LST. The frequency 3 year^-1 successfully separate the North China Plain (NCP) exercising a double crop from the other regions of East Asia. The hot spell from the first harvest in the region became more distinctive by the following rainy season increasing the power of frequency 2 year^-1.