MODIS Aqua: Monthly Global Sea Surface Temperature at 4km Resolution

NASA's Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard the Aqua satellite provides global skin sea surface temperature (SST) data. The Level 3 product offers monthly averages at a 4.63 km spatial resolution, derived from thermal infrared and mid-infrared channels. The data is processed by the NASA Ocean Biology Processing Group and algorithm development is led by the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.

Use Cases

• Modeling global ocean heat flux and climate patterns based on spatially gridded monthly skin SST.
• Validating other satellite or in-situ sea surface temperature measurements based on the MODIS algorithm with two product types (NSST and SST4).
• Studiating diurnal warming cycles and thermal fronts based on daytime-specific observations at 4km resolution.
• Analyzing long-term sea surface temperature trends for a specific region based on the monthly composite data.

Strengths

• Data originates from the NASA MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite, launched on May 4, 2002.
• Offers two specialized SST products: a skin SST for day/night and an SST4 with lower uncertainty for night-only use.
• Provides data at multiple temporal resolutions (daily, 8-day, monthly, annual) and two spatial resolutions (4.63 km and 9.26 km).

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 training.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Ocean Biology Processing Group, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing data from MODIS/Aqua, processed to Level 3 by binning pixels into an integerized sinusoidal area grid.

Time Range

Coverage likely begins after the Aqua satellite launch in May 2002.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 23:56:34.230689; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global ocean coverage.