Source/sensor: NOAA-n AVHRR

Coverage: 1985 - 1997, global

Abstract: This product contains monthly and pentad (five-day) climatologies of sea surface temperature (SST) data using the V4, V4.1, and interim V4.1 NOAA/NASA AVHRR Oceans Pathfinder data. The climatologies were created using daily averaged SST over monthly and pentad periods for 1985-1997 at 9.28km resolution. The data are provided by Dr. Ken Casey at the NOAA National Oceanographic Data Center. The climatological SST files are flat binary files containing an array of 4096 by 2048 8-bit unsigned characters.

This climatology has been tested against other SST climatologies using the method described in Casey and Cornillon (1999). Based on those tests, this climatology outperforms the GISST, GOSTA, WOA94, Jorge Vazquez, and Reynolds SST climatologies. The Monthly Pathfinder+Erosion SST climatology is essentially as good as the Pentad Pathfinder+Erosion SST climatology, but for some applications there may be a concern that using only monthly SST values could introduce a bias since a monthly mean will always be lower (higher) than the maximum (minimum) SST in the annual cycle. In these cases the pentad climatology would be preferable.

Data Set Volume: ~188 MB compressed

Smallest order: One file via FTP

Data Format: Binary

Media Format:
These data are available via anonymous FTP to podaac.jpl.nasa.gov in the pub/sea_surface_temperature/climatology/pathfinder/nsipp/ directory.