MODIS Aqua: Global Sea Surface Temperature at 9km Nighttime Resolution

NASA's Aqua satellite, launched May 4, 2002, provides daily global skin sea surface temperature measurements at 9.26 km resolution. The Level 3 data products are generated by the NASA Ocean Biology Processing Group and include a unique nighttime SST4 product derived from mid-infrared channels with lower uncertainty. This version (R2019.0) supersedes the previous v2014.1 dataset.

Use Cases

• Modeling global ocean heat content based on daily skin sea surface temperature measurements.
• Studying diurnal temperature cycles by comparing day and night SST products.
• Analyzing long-term SST trends using the available average weekly, monthly, and annual products.
• Assessing algorithm performance by comparing the standard IR-derived SST with the lower-uncertainty nighttime SST4 product.

Strengths

• Data originates from NASA's MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite, a well-documented scientific platform.
• Includes a unique SST4 product derived from mid-infrared channels, which the description states has lower uncertainty for nighttime observations.
• Provides data at multiple temporal aggregations: daily, 8-day, monthly, and annual.
• Spatial resolution is specified as 9.26 km for this product.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The SST4 product is only usable at night due to sun glint contamination during daytime.
• Row count and exact file sizes are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Ocean Biology Processing Group

Collection Method

Spatially gridded (Level 3) products created by binning Level 2 pixels from the MODIS sensor into an integerized sinusoidal area grid.

Time Range

Coverage likely begins after the Aqua satellite launch on May 4, 2002; specific end date is not provided.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 23:57:20.809770; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global ocean coverage.