MODIS Terra: Global Sea Surface Temperature Nighttime Satellite Data

Global spatially gridded skin sea surface temperature (SST) products from the NASA MODIS instrument on the Terra satellite. The dataset includes daily, weekly, monthly, and annual averages at 4.63 and 9.26 km resolution, derived from thermal infrared and mid-infrared channels, with nighttime SST4 products having lower uncertainty. It is generated by the NASA Ocean Biology Processing Group and algorithm development is led by Peter Minnett at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.

Use Cases

• Modeling global ocean heat content based on daily and weekly averaged skin SST.
• Analyzing diurnal temperature variations by comparing daytime and nighttime SST products.
• Studying long-term climate trends using monthly and annual SST averages.
• Validating SST algorithms by comparing the standard IR-derived SST with the lower-uncertainty nighttime SST4 product.

Strengths

• Provides data at multiple temporal resolutions: daily, weekly (8-day), monthly, and annual.
• Offers two spatial resolutions: 4.63 km and 9.26 km.
• Includes a specialized nighttime SST4 product derived from unique MODIS mid-infrared channels with lower uncertainty.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The SST4 product is only available at night due to sun glint constraints.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Data captured by the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard the Terra satellite, processed and binned into grids by the NASA Ocean Biology Processing Group.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 00:26:12.687432; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global