Sea Surface Temperature Seasonal Variations from MODIS, 2002-2017

A geospatial dataset measuring long-term seasonal variations in sea surface temperature (SST) for Australian waters. The data is derived from NASA MODIS (Aqua) satellite imagery processed with SeaDAS software, covering July 2002 to December 2017. It was produced by Geoscience Australia with support from the National Environmental Science Program (NESP) Marine Biodiversity Hub.

Use Cases

• Modeling seasonal climate patterns based on standard deviation of SST across austral seasons.
• Analyzing long-term temperature trends in the Australian Exclusive Economic Zone and Southern Ocean.
• Studying marine ecosystem responses to seasonal temperature variability mentioned in the description.

Strengths

• Data spans over 15 years, from July 2002 to December 2017.
• Covers a large geographic extent including the entire Australian EEZ and surrounding waters.
• Derived from a consistent, well-documented source (NASA MODIS Aqua) and processing pipeline (SeaDAS).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Freshness should be verified as the underlying data ends in 2017.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Derived from MODIS (Aqua) satellite images using NASA's SeaDAS image processing software.

Time Range

July 2002 to December 2017

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-20 03:49:10.840268; underlying data covers 2002-2017.

Geography

Australian Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and surrounding waters, including the southern ocean.