MODIS Terra: Daily Nighttime Sea Surface Temperature at 9km Resolution

NASA MODIS Terra satellite provides daily, weekly, monthly, and annual global sea surface temperature (SST) data at 4.63 and 9.26 km resolution. The dataset includes a standard skin SST product and a lower uncertainty SST4 product derived from mid-infrared channels, available only at night. Data is processed by the NASA Ocean Biology Processing Group and archived by JPL's PO.DAAC.

Use Cases

• Monitoring global ocean warming trends based on daily and annual averaged SST products.
• Studying diurnal temperature variations by comparing daytime skin SST with nighttime SST4.
• Validating climate models using spatially gridded SST data at 9km resolution.
• Analyzing regional ocean heat content for fisheries or marine ecosystem research based on the gridded temperature maps.

Strengths

• Provides two distinct SST products: a standard skin SST and a lower uncertainty SST4 available at night.
• Offers data at multiple temporal aggregations: daily, weekly (8-day), monthly, and annual.
• Available at two spatial resolutions: 4.63 km and 9.26 km.
• Data is generated by NASA's Ocean Biology Processing Group and represents version R2019, superseding previous releases.

Limitations

• The SST4 product with lower uncertainty is only available for nighttime observations.
• 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)

Collection Method

Spatially gridded (L3) products created by binning L2 pixels from the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite into an integerized sinusoidal area grid.

Time Range

Data collection began after Terra's launch on December 18, 1999; temporal coverage is not specified.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 00:26:18.434860; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global coverage.