GHRSST NOAA/STAR GOES-16 ABI L3C: Sea Surface Temperature for the America Region

24 hourly data granules are produced per day, with a total volume of 0.2GB/day. This gridded sea surface temperature dataset is derived from the GOES-16 satellite's Advanced Baseline Imager, processed by NOAA/STAR and NASA, and last updated in March 2026. It reports SSTs, clear-sky masks, wind speed, and error statistics for valid water pixels, including areas up to 5 km inland.

Use Cases

• Modeling ocean heat content and thermal fronts based on hourly sea surface temperature (SST) data.
• Assessing satellite SST retrieval accuracy using the included Sensor-Specific Error Statistics (SSES) layers.
• Analyzing diurnal warming patterns based on the 24 hourly granules produced per day.
• Masking cloud-contaminated pixels for clear-sky analysis using the ACSPO clear-sky mask (ACSM).
• Correlating sea surface temperature anomalies with wind speed using the co-reported NCEP wind speed data.

Strengths

• Data is produced at a high temporal resolution, with 24 one-hour granules generated per day.
• Includes multiple validated layers per pixel, such as SST, error statistics, clear-sky flags, and wind speed.
• Follows the standardized GHRSST Data Specification version 2 (GDS2) for interoperability.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for specific analytical needs.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Gridded (Level 3 Collated) product derived from the ACSPO GOES-16/ABI Level 2P satellite data.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 02:39:38.270757; freshness should be verified.

Geography

America Region, covering ocean, sea, lake, or river pixels up to 5 km inland.