Australia's ocean region from 70°E to 170°W and 20°N to 70°S is covered by a 0.02° resolution map of sea surface temperature. The data is derived from night-time observations by the VIIRS instrument on the Suomi-NPP satellite, processed using Sensor Specific Error Statistics. The Australian Ocean Data Network provides this product through IMOS.
Use Cases
- Analyze diurnal sea surface temperature variations based on night-time-only observations.
- Monitor marine heatwave events in the Australian region based on high-resolution SSTskin data.
- Validate ocean model outputs against satellite-derived SST measurements based on quality-weighted composites.
- Study regional oceanographic patterns based on the cylindrical equidistant projected map covering a wide area.
Strengths
- Data is derived from a specific sensor (VIIRS on Suomi-NPP) with documented processing methods.
- Product covers a defined geographic region (70°E to 170°W, 20°N to 70°S) at a 0.02° grid resolution.
- Includes quality-level remapping using Sensor Specific Error Statistics (SSES) as described in Griffin et al. (2017).
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 bias inherent to being exclusively night-time passes.
Provenance
- Source
- Australian Ocean Data Network via IMOS (Integrated Marine Observing System).
- Collection Method
- Derived from VIIRS instrument observations on the Suomi-NPP satellite, composited and quality-weighted.
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-05-05 07:16:32.733926; freshness should be verified.
- Geography
- 70°E to 170°W, 20°N to 70°S (Australian ocean region).