GOES-18 Satellite Sea Surface Temperature Data for the West America Region

The G18-ABI-L2P-ACSPO-v2.90 dataset provides hourly sea surface temperature (SST) measurements derived from the Advanced Baseline Imager on the GOES-18 satellite. Produced by NOAA's ACSPO system, it covers a Full Disk area from 163E-77W and 60S-60N with a spatial resolution of 2km at nadir and a total data volume of 0.8 GB per day. Near-real-time data are updated hourly, with delayed-mode files available after approximately two months.

Use Cases

• Modeling ocean heat content and climate patterns based on hourly SST observations.
• Validating numerical weather prediction models using near-real-time satellite SST data.
• Monitoring marine heatwaves and oceanographic phenomena in the West America region.
• Assimilating SST data into ocean circulation models to improve forecast accuracy.
• Studying diurnal warming cycles using the dataset's 10-minute temporal sampling.

Strengths

• Data is validated against quality-controlled in situ data from the NOAA iQuam system.
• Provides a high temporal resolution with 10-minute sampling collated into hourly products.
• Covers a broad geographic area (163E-77W, 60S-60N) with 2km spatial resolution at nadir.

Limitations

• Pixel earth locations are not reported in the granules and must be obtained from separate files or scripts.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The dataset description does not specify the exact number of rows or observations.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ACSPO system, distributed via NASA.

Collection Method

Derived from the Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) onboard the GOES-18 satellite.

Time Range

Coverage began after the GOES-18 launch on March 1, 2022.

Freshness

Near-real-time data updated hourly; delayed-mode files have a latency of ~2 months.

Geography

Full Disk area covering 163E-77W and 60S-60N, focusing on the West America region.