Monthly Sea Surface Temperature Climatology for Canadian Pacific EEZ (1981-2010)

Night-time sea surface temperature (SST) data from the AVHRR Pathfinder project, averaged into monthly climatological composites spanning 1981 to 2010. The dataset provides monthly mean SST, monthly standard deviation, and the number of valid data occurrences per pixel at a 4 km resolution, cropped to the Canadian Pacific Exclusive Economic Zone.

Use Cases

• Analyze monthly mean SST patterns across the Canadian Pacific EEZ to study long-term climate trends.
• Use monthly standard deviation values to identify regions of high SST variability for ecological risk assessment.
• Map the number of valid data occurrences per pixel to assess observational coverage and data reliability over the 30-year period.
• Correlate SST climatology with other oceanographic datasets using the NAD83 (EPSG:4269) coordinate reference system for spatial analysis.

Strengths

• Provides a 30-year climatological baseline (1981-2010) for sea surface temperature.
• Data is processed at a 4 km spatial resolution, offering detailed spatial analysis.
• Includes three key data layers: monthly mean SST, monthly standard deviation, and count of valid observations.
• Quality-controlled by removing pixels with a quality level lower than 4 and those with fewer than two valid occurrences.

Limitations

• Short-lived or spatially limited thermal events may be missed due to temporal averaging.
• Uncertainty exists as each pixel has a differing number of observations, affecting the averaged values.
• Data is temporally stale, representing a historical baseline ending in 2010.

Provenance

Source

NOAA-distributed AVHRR Pathfinder version 5.3 Level 3C night Sea Surface Temperature data.

Collection Method

Monthly mean values calculated per year and combined into final climatological maps of mean, standard deviation, and observation count; pixels with low quality or few occurrences were removed and set to NaN.

Time Range

1981 to 2010.

Freshness

Historical baseline dataset; last metadata update was 2026-03-24.

Geography

Canadian Pacific Exclusive Economic Zone, in NAD83 (EPSG:4269) coordinate system.