GHRSST L2P: VIIRS Sea Surface Temperature from NOAA-20

NOAA-20's VIIRS sensor provides global daily sea surface temperature measurements at a native resolution of ~0.75 km. The dataset includes 144 ten-minute granules per day, totaling 27GB, and reports brightness temperatures from four infrared bands alongside pixel-level quality flags. NOAA's Advanced Clear-Sky Processor for Ocean system applies destriping and resampling algorithms to minimize sensor artifacts.

Use Cases

• Monitoring ocean heat content and climate change trends based on high-resolution global SST data.
• Assimilating SST observations into numerical weather prediction models using the pixel-level quality flags.
• Validating oceanographic models by comparing them against in-situ data via the NOAA SQUAM and iQuam systems.
• Studying diurnal warming and thermal fronts using the day/night algorithms and added front layers.

Strengths

• Provides global daily coverage with a wide 3,060 km swath from a polar orbit.
• Employs destriping and resampling algorithms (ACSPO v2.60+) to minimize bow-tie distortions and sensor striping.
• Includes pixel-level quality flags and Sensor-Specific Error Statistics for confidently clear pixels.
• Monitored and validated against in-situ data via NOAA's SQUAM and iQuam systems.

Limitations

• Metadata completeness is low; specific column names, row counts, and license information are unavailable across all sources.
• The dataset's update history is inconsistent, with one platform showing a last update date of 2026-03-05 while another shows none.

Provenance

Source

NOAA's Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), processed by the Advanced Clear-Sky Processor for Ocean (ACSPO) system.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing via the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the NOAA-20 spacecraft.

Time Range

Coverage begins after the NOAA-20 satellite launch on November 18, 2017.

Freshness

2026-03-05 22:27:04.651954

Geography

Global ocean coverage.