AVHRR and VIIRS Multi-Sensor Composite
Sea Surface Temperature

Sea surface temperature (SST) is composited into a multi-sensor combined SST product utilizing data from two instruments: the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) on the European MetOp satellites, and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the U.S. Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) and NOAA Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) satellites

The single-sensor SST input scenes are processed to derive SST consistently for both instruments using the Advanced Clear-Sky Processor for Oceans (ACSPO) processing system, which utilizes a regression SST algorithm described in Petrenko et al., 2014.

Only nighttime overpasses for the U.S. east coast are used in the composite, i.e. the data do not represent daytime solar heating of the ocean surface.

The individual nighttime scenes are gridded on an 830 m earth-projected grid, close to the spatial resolution of both the VIIRS instrument (750 m) and the AVHRR instrument (1100 m). The regridded scenes are averaged together on a per night basis. As a daily nighttime SST data product, night ranges from roughly 9:30 PM to 1:30 AM, the approximate nighttime local equator crossing times of the AVHRR (MetOp) and VIIRS (SNPP and JPSS) sensors respectively.

With two instruments on multiple satellites, the combined product allows for more gap-filling of missing data from cloud cover, and thus more spatial coverage, than any of the individual scenes.

SST data products that represent longer time intervals, i.e. 3-day, 7-day, monthly, seasonal and annual composites, are created by averaging dailies. For example, the seasonal product averages approximately 90 days of data, not 3 months of 30-day averages. Similarly, annual products average 365 dailies, not 12 months. With fewer averaging steps, the effect of temperature outliers is minimized, unlike multiple averaging steps which would preserve the impact of outliers

This dataset begins December 2006. Processing occurs in near real-time mode with daily composites available as quickly as 14 hours behind data collection. Daily composites may be updated if additional data becomes available within 36 hours.

AVHRR-VIIRS Multi-Sensor SST (ACSPO, night only) Carolina Coast April 26, 2021

Jonasson, O., A. Ignatov, V. Pryamitsyn, B. Petrenko, Y. Kihai, 2022: JPSS VIIRS SST Reanalysis Version 3. Remote Sensing, 14(14), 3476, https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14143476

Petrenko, B., A. Ignatov, Y. Kihai, P. Dash, 2016: Sensor-Specific Error Statistics for SST in the Advanced Clear-Sky Processor for Oceans. Jour. of Atmos. and Ocean. Technology, 33, 345-359, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-15-0166.1

Petrenko, B., A. Ignatov, Y. Kihai, J. Stroup, P. Dash, 2014: Evaluation and Selection of SST Regression Algorithms for JPSS VIIRS. Journal of Geophysical Research, 119, 4580-4599, doi:10.1002/2013JD020637

Petrenko, B., A. Ignatov, Y. Kihai, and A. Heidinger, 2010: Clear-Sky Mask for ACSPO. Jour. of Atmos. and Ocean. Technology, 27, 1609-1623, doi:10.1175/2010JTECHA1413.1