GHRSST: North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature from NOAA-19 Satellite

A satellite-derived dataset of subskin sea surface temperature for the North Atlantic Region, produced by EUMETSAT's OSI SAF. It is derived from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) on the NOAA-19 platform, launched in February 2009. Data are re-mapped onto a 0.02-degree grid from 1km AVHRR observations, adhering to GHRSST GDS version 2 specifications.

Use Cases

• Modeling ocean heat content and climate patterns based on high-resolution sea surface temperature fields.
• Validating and calibrating other satellite or in-situ ocean temperature measurements based on the described multispectral retrieval technique.
• Studying diurnal and seasonal thermal variability in the North Atlantic based on the sun-synchronous, twice-daily observation schedule.
• Assimilating satellite-derived SST into numerical weather prediction and ocean forecasting models.

Strengths

• Data is derived from a well-established sensor (AVHRR) with an operational legacy tracing back to 1978.
• Provides high-resolution data remapped to a consistent 0.02-degree equal angle grid.
• Adheres to the standardized GHRSST Data Processing Specification (GDS) version 2 format.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale ML projects.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Processed from global AVHRR level 1b data acquired via EUMETCAST, with cloud masking and multispectral SST retrieval.

Time Range

Coverage begins after the NOAA-19 platform launch on 6 February 2009.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 02:33:09.520315; freshness should be verified.

Geography

North Atlantic Region (NAR).