Aquarius V5.0: Monthly Ancillary Sea Surface Temperature

Aquarius Level 3 ancillary sea surface temperature (SST) data are derived from the Reynolds National Climatic Data Center daily dataset and processed to support salinity retrieval from the AQUARIUS/SAC-D mission. The data are gridded to a 1-degree spatial resolution and are available at daily, 7-day, monthly, seasonal, and annual intervals. This specific dataset contains the monthly ancillary SST product from the official version 5.0 end-of-mission public release.

Use Cases

• Calibrating satellite-based salinity retrieval algorithms based on ancillary SST data.
• Analyzing monthly sea surface temperature anomalies at a 1-degree global grid resolution.
• Validating ocean and climate models using gridded, satellite-era SST observations.
• Studying the correlation between sea surface temperature and ocean salinity over time.

Strengths

• Represents the official end-of-mission public data release (version 5.0) from the AQUARIUS/SAC-D mission.
• Provides data at multiple temporal resolutions (daily to annual) from a consistent processing scheme.
• Sourced from the authoritative Reynolds National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) dataset.

Limitations

• Specific column names and row counts are not provided in any source, limiting detailed understanding of the data structure.
• The last updated date conflicts between sources (2015 on NASA Earthdata vs. 2026 on Data.gov), creating uncertainty about data currency.
• License is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' without further details.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), AQUARIUS/SAC-D mission.

Collection Method

Daily SSTs from the Reynolds NCDC 0.25-degree dataset, gridded and averaged using the Aquarius L2-L3 processing scheme.

Freshness

2026-03-13 15:02:44.592337

Geography

Global, gridded to 1-degree spatial resolution.