Monthly Sea Surface Temperature Climatology for Canadian Pacific EEZ (2003-2020)

Night-time sea surface temperature climatology was derived from MODIS-Aqua satellite data at 1 km resolution, spanning 18 years from 2003 to 2020. Fisheries and Oceans Canada processed the data, calculating monthly mean and standard deviation values for the Canadian Pacific Exclusive Economic Zone. The dataset provides three primary data layers: monthly mean SST, monthly standard deviation, and the number of valid data occurrences per pixel.

Use Cases

• Analyze spatial patterns of monthly mean sea surface temperature across the Canadian Pacific EEZ to identify warming or cooling trends.
• Assess temperature variability by examining the monthly standard deviation layer to locate regions with stable or highly fluctuating SST conditions.
• Evaluate data reliability for specific pixels by referencing the number of occurrences layer, which counts valid observations over the 2003-2020 period.
• Model oceanographic processes by using the 1 km resolution monthly climatology as a baseline for regional climate simulations.

Strengths

• Provides an 18-year temporal record from 2003 to 2020, enabling long-term climatological analysis.
• Offers high spatial resolution data at approximately 1 km per pixel, cropped to the Canadian Pacific Exclusive Economic Zone.
• Includes three analytically distinct data layers: monthly mean, monthly standard deviation, and count of valid data occurrences.

Limitations

• Data gaps exist where pixels had fewer than two valid observations over the entire 18-year period, resulting in NaN values.
• Uncertainties are introduced due to the averaging of images where each pixel has a differing number of observations, potentially missing short-lived events.
• The dataset is a climatological composite and does not provide raw, daily satellite imagery for fine-grained temporal analysis.

Provenance

Source

NASA Ocean Biology Processing Group (MODIS-Aqua Level 2 Ocean Color Data Version R2018.0).

Collection Method

Night-time SST from MODIS-Aqua was processed with SeaDAS, quality-filtered, averaged into monthly climatologies, and cropped to the EEZ.

Time Range

2003-01-01 to 2020-12-31

Freshness

Data covers up to December 2020; the metadata was last updated in March 2026.

Geography

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