Spatial and Temporal Assessment of Remotely Sensed Land Surface Temperature Variability in Afghanistan During 2000–2021

The dynamics of land surface temperature (LST) in Afghanistan in the period 2000–2021 were investigated, and the impact of the factors such as soil moisture, precipitation, and vegetation coverage on LST was assessed. The remotely sensed soil moisture data from Land Data Assimilation System (FLDAS), precipitation data from Climate Hazards Group Infra-Red Precipitation with Station (CHIRPS), and NDVI and LST from Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) were used. The correlations between these data were analyzed using the regression method. The result shows that the LST in Afghanistan has a slightly decreasing but insignificant trend during the study period (R = 0.2, p-value = 0.25), while vegetation coverage, precipitation, and soil moisture had an increasing trend. It was revealed that soil moisture has the highest impact on LST (R = −0.71, p-value = 0.0007), and the soil moisture, precipitation, and vegetation coverage explain almost 80% of spring (R2 = 0.73) and summer (R2 = 0.76) LST variability in Afghanistan. The LST variability analysis performed separately for Afghanistan’s river subbasins shows that the LST of the Amu Darya subbasin had an upward trend in the study period, while for the Kabul subbasin, the trend was downward.