GHRSST Level 2P: Global Sea Surface Temperature from Metop-B IASI Satellite

GHRSST Level 2P dataset provides global skin sea surface temperature (SST) retrievals from the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) on the Metop-B satellite. The European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility (OSI SAF) produces these SST products in near real-time. Data is collected twice daily from a sun-synchronous orbit with a horizontal resolution of 12 km at nadir.

Use Cases

• Modeling ocean heat content and climate patterns based on global sea surface temperature measurements.
• Assimilating near-real-time SST data into numerical weather prediction models.
• Calibrating and validating other satellite-derived sea surface temperature products.
• Studying diurnal warming cycles based on twice-daily global observation capability.
• Analyzing spatial SST gradients at a resolution of 12 km at nadir.

Strengths

• Provides global coverage with observations twice a day.
• Data has a specified horizontal resolution of 12 km at nadir.
• Produced in near real-time by the authoritative EUMETSAT OSI SAF.
• Product format is compliant with the GHRSST Data Specification (GDS) version 2.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect temporal or geographic bias inherent to the single satellite source.

Provenance

Source

European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility (OSI SAF).

Collection Method

SST retrievals generated from the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) on the Metop-B satellite, processed by the IASI L2 processor at EUMETSAT.

Time Range

Data collection began after the Metop-B satellite launch on 17 Sep 2012.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 02:33:49.723410; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global ocean coverage.