Monthly Sea Surface Temperature Climatology for the Canadian Pacific, 1990-2020

Fisheries and Oceans Canada provides a 30-year monthly climatology of night-time sea surface temperature for the Canadian Pacific Exclusive Economic Zone. The dataset was derived from NOAA AVHRR Pathfinder satellite data at 4 km resolution, spanning 1990 through 2020. It includes monthly mean and standard deviation rasters, cropped to the EEZ and provided in multiple geospatial formats.

Use Cases

• Modeling long-term ocean warming trends based on the 30-year monthly climatology.
• Analyzing seasonal temperature variability for marine habitats based on monthly mean and standard deviation maps.
• Calibrating regional climate models using quality-controlled, 4 km resolution satellite data.
• Assessing data coverage and uncertainty for the Pacific EEZ based on the provided pixel occurrence counts.

Strengths

• Covers a 30-year time period from 1990 to 2020.
• Uses a 4 km spatial resolution, providing detailed coastal data.
• Includes quality control, removing pixels with a quality level lower than 4.
• Provides three core data layers: monthly mean, monthly standard deviation, and number of pixel occurrences.

Limitations

• Row and column counts are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• The averaging process may miss short-lived or spatially limited thermal events, as noted in the uncertainties.

Provenance

Source

Fisheries and Oceans Canada

Collection Method

Night-time sea surface temperature from NOAA AVHRR Pathfinder v5.3 Level 3C data, averaged into monthly climatological composites.

Time Range

1990-2020

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-24 08:07:49.057191

Geography

Canadian Pacific Exclusive Economic Zone