**2. Study Area**

In the present paper, we analyze the relationship between daily and 8-day mean *T<sup>a</sup>* from 11 high-altitude weather stations (Table 1) in Western Himalaya (Figure 1) and the respective daily and 8-day mean *T<sup>s</sup>* measured by MODIS. The daily and 8-day night- and day-time *T<sup>s</sup>* observations from Version 6 of Terra MODIS (MOD11A1 and MOD11A2 available from February, 2000) and Aqua MODIS (MYD11A1 and MYD11A2 available from July, 2002) were used to calculate average daily and 8-day *Ts* , respectively.

**Figure 1.** The map showing the location of the stations considered in the study for comparison of land surface temperature (*Ts*) and air temperature (*Ta*) with elevation (Aster GDEM v2, 2011) profile of the region.

The stations in the present study are located over a large elevation range above sea level (1587–4280 m) (Figure 1). All the stations used in the analysis are located above 2100 m except for Srinagar which is located at 1587 m. These stations are located in three different Himalayan states of India namely Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir. In addition, we have also included one station (Shiquanhe) from the Chinese part of the region in the study (Figure 1). These stations represent various precipitation regimes of the region such as monsoon dominance, westerly dominance, the precipitation-transition zone from monsoon-to-westerly dominance, and orographic precipitation-shadow zone. The topographic variations, i.e., altitudes and orography, among the Himalayan ranges not only govern the temperatures but also the precipitation [34]. Here, we aim to further untangle the degree of control of the altitude and orography in deciding the correlation between *Ts* and *Ta* in the Himalaya.


**Table 1.** Details of meteorological stations used for comparison in the present study.

### **3. Materials and Methods**
