MODIS Sea Surface Temperature Seasonal Variations Across Australian Waters, 2002-2017

Geoscience Australia Data provides a dataset measuring long-term seasonal variations of sea surface temperature (SST) derived from MODIS Aqua satellite imagery. It contains processed monthly SST images from July 2002 to December 2017, used to calculate standard deviations for austral seasons. The research was supported by the National Environmental Science Program (NESP) Marine Biodiversity Hub.

Use Cases

• Modeling seasonal climate variability based on austral season standard deviations.
• Analyzing long-term sea surface temperature trends based on a 15-year time series.
• Studying oceanographic patterns within the Australian Exclusive Economic Zone based on the described geographic extent.

Strengths

• Covers a 15-year time range from July 2002 to December 2017.
• Geographic extent includes the entire Australian EEZ and surrounding waters.
• Data is derived from MODIS Aqua satellite imagery processed with NASA's SeaDAS software.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

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

Time Range

July 2002 to December 2017

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-14 04:52:43.582291; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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