Subtracting image by image from two image collections

Question

I have two image collections of MonthlyMean of MODIS LST Day and NIght. from this I am trying to extract the diurnal range by subtracting LST_Night from Lst_Day. I have managed to calculate monthly and annual mean LST for Day and Night but got stuck in the subtraction process. being a novice to coding hereby I would like to seek some help to get over this problem from the expert community. below is the code I have used :

//Scale to Kelvin and convert to Celsius, set image acquisition time.
var modLSTc = function(img) {
  return img
    .multiply(0.02)
    .subtract(273.15)
    .copyProperties(img, ['system:time_start']);
};

// Import LST image collection.
var modis_day = ee.ImageCollection("MODIS/006/MOD11A1")
                  .filterDate('2000-01-01', '2017-12-31')
                //.select('LST_Night_1km')
                .select('LST_Day_1km')
                //.mean()
                .filterBounds(geometry)
                .map(modLSTc);

//print(modis_day)

var months = ee.List.sequence(1, 12);
var years = ee.List.sequence(2000, 2017);

var byMonthYear_day = ee.ImageCollection.fromImages(
  years.map(function(y) {
    return months.map(function (m) {
      return modis_day
        .filter(ee.Filter.calendarRange(y, y, 'year'))
        .filter(ee.Filter.calendarRange(m, m, 'month'))
        .mean()
        .set('month', m)
        .set('year', y)
        .set('system:time_start', ee.Date.fromYMD(y,m,1).millis())
  }); 
}).flatten());
//print(byMonthYear_day)


var modis_night = LST.filterDate('2000-01-01', '2017-12-31')
                .select('LST_Night_1km')
                //.select('LST_Day_1km')
                //.mean()
                .filterBounds(geometry)
                .map(modLSTc);

//print(modis_day);

var byMonthYear_night = ee.ImageCollection.fromImages(
  years.map(function(y) {
    return months.map(function (m) {
      return modis_day
        .filter(ee.Filter.calendarRange(y, y, 'year'))
        .filter(ee.Filter.calendarRange(m, m, 'month'))
        .mean()
        .set('month', m)
        .set('year', y)
        .set('system:time_start', ee.Date.fromYMD(y,m,1).millis())
  }); 
}).flatten());
//print(byMonthYear_night)

////////Subtraction between image collections image by image///////////////////
// First make a list of a useful numerical property of the image collection 
// and make sure they are ordered by time
var lstday = byMonthYear_day.sort('system:time_start');
var lstnight = byMonthYear_night.sort('system:time_start');

var dateListday = ee.List(lstday.aggregate_array('system:time_start'));//.slice(1); // remove the first date
var dateListnight = ee.List(lstnight.aggregate_array('system:time_start'));
// Now map over that list, so we now the index of each image
var LSTdiffday = ee.ImageCollection.fromImages(dateListday.map(function(date){

  // get the image corresponding to the date
  var currentImageDay = lstday.filter(ee.Filter.eq('system:time_start', date)).first();
      return currentImageDay;
}));

//print(LSTdiffday)

var LSTdiffnight = ee.ImageCollection.fromImages(dateListnight.map(function(date){

  // get the image corresponding to the date
  var currentImageNight = lstnight.filter(ee.Filter.eq('system:time_start', date)).first();
      return currentImageNight;
}))

//print(LSTdiffnight)

// Subtract the current image from the previous
  var diffImage = LSTdiffday.subtract(LSTdiffnight); //.select(['NDVI'], ['NDVIdiff'])
//    return diffImages
//})

Answer 1

Your code isn't complete so I can't test, but you can probably just combine() the two collections to get the same number of images but with two bands. Then you just map over that and subtract band-1 from band-0.

var result = byMonthYear_day.combine(byMonthYear_night)
    .map(function(img) {
        return img.select(0).subtract(img.select(1))
           .copyProperties(img, ['system:time_start']);
    })

All that said, it would have just been easier if you hadn't bothered to separate the two bands to begin with; the processing you're applying to them is the same, so just do it once, with both bands, by adding the night band to the first select()