Published By National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce
Issued about 9 years ago
Summary
Description
The through-cloud capabilities of microwave radiometers provide a valuable picture of global sea surface temperature (SST). To utilize this, scientists at Remote Sensing Systems have calculated a daily, Optimally Interpolated (OI) SST product at quarter degree (~25 kilometer) resolution. This product is ideal for research activities in which a complete, daily SST map is more desirable than one with missing data due to orbital gaps or environmental conditions precluding SST retrieval. Improved global daily NRT SSTs should be useful for a wide range of scientific and operational activities. The addition of SST derived from Ifrared (IR) measurements allows higher spatial resolution, and SST near land.However, IR input is less accurate than MW due to cloud contamination. Blending MW and IR enables greater coverage and higher accuracy than IR only SSTs, but current OI does not completely eliminate cloud contamination inherent to IR SSTs