MODIS Aqua Level 3 SST Thermal IR Monthly 4km Nighttime V2019.0

10.5067/MODSA-MO4N9

MODIS_AQUA_L3_SST_THERMAL_MONTHLY_4KM_NIGHTTIME_V2019.0

Day and night spatially gridded (L3) global NASA skin sea surface temperature (SST) products from the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard the Aqua satellite. Average daily, weekly (8 day), monthly and annual skin SST products at are available at both 4.63 and 9.26 km spatial resolution. Aqua was launched by NASA on May 4, 2002, into a sun synchronous, polar orbit with a daylight ascending node at 13:30, formation flying in the A-train with other Earth Observation Satellites (EOS), to study the global dynamics of the Earth atmosphere, land and oceans. MODIS captures data in 36 spectral bands at a variety of spatial resolutions. Two SST products can be present in these files. The first is a skin SST produced for both day and night (NSST) observations, derived from the long wave IR 11 and 12 micron wavelength channels, using a modified nonlinear SST algorithm intended to provide continuity of SST derived from heritage and current NASA sensors. At night, a second SST product is generated using the mid-infrared 3.95 and 4.05 micron wavelength channels which are unique to MODIS; the SST derived from these measurements is identified as SST4. The SST4 product has lower uncertainty, but due to sun glint can only be used at night. To generate the L3 products the L2 pixels are binned into an integerized sinusoidal area grid (ISEAG) and mapped into an equidistant cylindrical (also known as Platte Carre projection. Additional projection detailed can be found at https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/format/ The NASA MODIS L3 SST data products are generated by the NASA Ocean Biology Processing Group (OBPG) and Peter Minnett and his team at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS) are responsible for sea surface temperature algorithm development, error statistics and quality flagging. JPL acquires MODIS ocean L3 SST data from the OBPG and is the official Physical Oceanography Data Archive (PO.DAAC) for SST. The R2019.0 supersedes the previous v2014.1 datasets which can be found at https://doi.org/10.5067/MODSA-MO4N4

2019.0

OCEANS › OCEAN TEMPERATURE › SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE

3

July 1, 2002 to Present

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Aqua/MODIS

Earth Observing System (EOS)

PO.DAAC