NOAA'S SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE PRODUCTS FROM OPERATIONAL GEOSTATIONARY SATELLITES

NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) has generated sea surface temperature (SST) products from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)East (E) and GOES-West (W) on an operational basis since December 2000. Since that time, a process of continual development has produced steady improvements in product accuracy. Recent improvements extended the capability to permit generation of operational SST retrievals from the Japanese Multifunction Transport Satellite (MTSAT)-1R and the European Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellite, thereby extending spatial coverage. The four geostationary satellites (at longitudes of 75 degrees W, 135 degrees W, 140 degrees E, and 0 degrees) provide high temporal SST retrievals for most of the tropics and midlatitudes, with the exception of a region between similar to 60 degrees and similar to 80 degrees E. Because of ongoing development, the quality of these retrievals now approaches that of SST products from the polar-orbiting Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR). These products from GOES provide hourly regional imagery, 3-hourly hemispheric imagery, 24-h merged composites, a GOES SST level 2 preprocessed product every 1/2 h for each hemisphere, and a match-up data file for each product. The MTSAT and the MSG products include hourly, 3-hourly, and 24-h merged composites. These products provide the user community with a reliable source of SST observations, with improved accuracy and increased coverage in important oceanographic, meteorological, and climatic regions. (Page 1877)