NOAA-20 VIIRS: Global Sea Surface Temperature from Triple-window Satellite Data

NOAA-20 VIIRS Level-3 Global Mapped Triple-window Sea Surface Temperature (SST3) Data, version R2024.0, is produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The dataset is generated by the Visible and Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) spacecraft, which includes 22 spectral bands ranging from 412 nm to 12 nm. It was last updated on March 12, 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling global ocean heat flux based on multi-spectral sea surface temperature measurements.
• Monitoring long-term sea surface temperature trends for climate change studies based on global satellite coverage.
• Calibrating and validating other oceanographic sensors based on the triple-window SST retrieval method.
• Analyzing diurnal and seasonal temperature variations in ocean basins based on the instrument's spectral bands.

Strengths

• Data is sourced from the VIIRS instrument, which has 22 spectral bands including 16 moderate-resolution and 5 image-resolution bands.
• The dataset represents a global mapped product, suggesting comprehensive spatial coverage.
• It is the successor to MODIS for Earth science data product generation, indicating a lineage of established methodology.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale ML tasks.
• The description metadata is limited; actual data quality and format specifics require manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing data from the Visible and Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) aboard the NOAA-20 (JPSS) spacecraft.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 23:16:48.897052; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Global