MODIS Aqua: Global Sea Surface Temperature from Satellite Thermal IR

NASA skin sea surface temperature (SST) products from the MODIS instrument onboard the Aqua satellite. The dataset provides spatially gridded (Level 3) global SST averages at daily, 8-day, monthly, and annual intervals, available at 4.63 and 9.26 km spatial resolution. It is generated by the NASA Ocean Biology Processing Group and the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, with JPL serving as the official archive.

Use Cases

• Modeling ocean heat flux and climate patterns based on global, gridded skin SST data.
• Studying diurnal warming cycles based on separate day and night SST observations.
• Analyzing long-term SST trends based on the dataset's availability from the satellite's 2002 launch.
• Comparing SST retrieval algorithms based on the inclusion of both standard (NSST) and MODIS-specific (SST4) products.

Strengths

• Provides data at multiple temporal resolutions: daily, 8-day, monthly, and annual.
• Offers two spatial resolution options: 4.63 km and 9.26 km.
• Includes two distinct SST products derived from different infrared wavelength channels.
• Data is sourced from a well-documented NASA satellite mission launched in 2002.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ocean Biology Processing Group (OBPG) and Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS).

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing data from the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite, processed into Level 3 gridded products.

Time Range

Data collection began after the Aqua satellite launch on May 4, 2002.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 23:57:22.258579; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global ocean coverage.