Himawari-9 Satellite Sea Surface Temperature Grids for Pacific Ocean

GHRSST L3C NOAA/ACSPO Himawari-09 AHI v2.90 dataset provides subskin sea surface temperature measurements from the Japanese Himawari-9 geostationary satellite. Data is gridded at 0.02-degree resolution with 24 hourly files produced daily, totaling approximately 0.7 GB per day. The product is generated by the NOAA ACSPO system from the Advanced Himawari Imager instrument and is validated against in situ data.

Use Cases

• Monitoring daily SST variability in the Pacific Ocean region using the 24 hourly gridded temperature layers.
• Validating ocean circulation models by comparing model outputs against the satellite-derived subskin SST field.
• Assessing sensor-specific error statistics for each pixel by analyzing the provided bias and standard deviation layers.
• Studying diurnal warming cycles by analyzing the time series of SST values across the 0.02-degree grid.
• Identifying data quality over internal waters where validation may be limited due to sparse in situ observations.

Strengths

• High temporal resolution with 24 hourly data granules produced each day.
• Spatial grid resolution of 0.02 degrees latitude/longitude.
• Includes per-pixel sensor-specific error statistics (bias and standard deviation).
• Validation performed against iQuam in situ data and monitored in the NOAA SQUAM system.

Limitations

• Data over internal waters (lakes, rivers) may not be adequately validated due to sparse in situ measurements.
• Near-real-time files are replaced with delayed mode files after approximately two months, requiring users to track version changes.
• Specific sample size (row count) and total historical volume are not provided in the description.

Provenance

Source

NOAA ACSPO system processing data from the Advanced Himawari Imager on the Japan Meteorological Agency's Himawari-9 satellite.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing; Level 3 Collated (L3C) data gridded from Level 2P source data.

Time Range

Operational data from at least December 13, 2022, when Himawari-9 was declared operational.

Freshness

Data is produced in near-real-time and replaced with delayed mode files after a 2-month latency.

Geography

Pacific Ocean region from the Himawari-9 geostationary position at 140.7-deg East.