GOES-18/ABI Sea Surface Temperature Grids for West America Region

West America Region hourly gridded sea surface skin temperature data derived from the NOAA GOES-18 satellite's Advanced Baseline Imager. The Level 3 Collated (L3C) product provides 24 granules per day, validated against in situ measurements and includes sensor-specific error statistics for each pixel. Data is available in both Near Real-Time and a higher-quality Delayed Mode version with a latency of approximately two months.

Use Cases

• Monitoring diurnal warming cycles based on hourly SST observations.
• Validating ocean circulation and climate models using gridded, satellite-derived SST fields.
• Assimilating near-real-time skin temperature data into numerical weather prediction systems.
• Studying regional marine heatwaves and thermal stress events in the Eastern Pacific.
• Calibrating and validating other satellite SST products using the included error statistics layers.

Strengths

• Provides sensor-specific error statistics (bias and standard deviation) for each valid SST pixel per GDS2 specifications.
• Product is continuously monitored and validated against iQuam in situ data within the NOAA SQUAM system.
• Offers a Delayed Mode reprocessed version for higher accuracy, replacing the initial Near Real-Time files.

Limitations

• Data over internal waters (lakes, rivers) may lack sufficient in situ data for adequate validation.
• Sources conflict on daily data volume, reporting both 1.2 GB/day and 0.7 GB/day.
• Column names and a complete data dictionary are not provided in the available metadata.

Provenance

Source

NOAA Advanced Clear Sky Processor for Ocean (ACSPO) system.

Collection Method

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

Time Range

Coverage begins after the GOES-18 satellite became operational as GOES West in January 2023.

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-04-10 according to nasa_earthdata and datagov.

Geography

West America Region (Eastern Pacific Ocean), as observed from the GOES-18 geostationary orbit.