Exploring land surface temperature earthquake precursors: A focus on the Gujarat (India) earthquake of 2001

There are many reports of land surface temperature (LST) anomalies appearing prior to large earthquakes. A number of methods have been applied in hindcast mode to identify these anomalies, using infrared datasets collected from Earth‐orbiting remote sensing satellites. Here we examine three such methods and apply them to six years (2001–2006) of MODIS LST data collected over the region of the 2001 Gujarat (India) earthquake, which previous studies have identified as a site exhibiting possible pre‐seismic and post- seismic thermal anomalies.