GHRSST Level 2P Global Sea Surface Skin Temperature from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the NASA Aqua satellite (GDS2)

Description

NASA produces skin sea surface temperature (SST) products from the Infrared (IR) channels of the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard the Aqua satellite. Aqua was launched by NASA on May 4, 2002, into a sun synchronous, polar orbit with a daylight ascending node at 1:30 pm, formation flying in the A-train with other Earth Observation Satellites (EOS), to study the global dynamics of the Earth atmosphere, land and oceans. MODIS captures data in 36 spectral bands at a variety of spatial resolutions. Two SST products can be present in these files. The first is a skin SST produced for both day and night (NSST) observations, derived from the long wave IR 11 and 12 micron wavelength channels, using a modified nonlinear SST algorithm intended to provide continuity of SST derived from heritage and current NASA sensors. At night, a second SST product is generated using the mid-infrared 3.95 and 4.05 micron wavelength channels which are unique to MODIS; the SST derived from these measurements is identified as SST4. The SST4 product has lower uncertainty, but due to sun glint can only be used at night. MODIS L2P SST data have a 1 km spatial resolution at nadir and are stored in 288 five minute granules per day. Full global coverage is obtained every two days, with coverage poleward of 32.3 degree being complete each day. The production of MODIS L2P SST files is part of the Group for High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (GHRSST) project and is a joint collaboration between the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the NASA Ocean Biology Processing Group (OBPG), and the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS). Researchers at RSMAS are responsible for SST algorithm development, error statistics and quality flagging, while the OBPG, as the NASA ground data system, is responsible for the production of daily MODIS ocean products. JPL acquires MODIS ocean granules from the OBPG and reformats them to the GHRSST L2P netCDF specification with complete metadata and ancillary variables, and distributes the data as the official Physical Oceanography Data Archive (PO.DAAC) for SST. The R2019.0 supersedes the previous R2014.0 datasets which can be found at https://doi.org/10.5067/GHMDA-2PJ02

Resources

Name Format Description Link
21 Search results for publications that cite this dataset by its DOI. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=10.5067%2FGHMDA-2PJ19
22 Thumbnail https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/Podaac/thumbnails/MODIS_A-JPL-L2P-v2019.0.jpg
21 Generic data readers https://github.com/podaac/data-readers
21 Group for High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature information https://ghrsst.jpl.nasa.gov
21 Data Quality Flag description https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/atbd/sst/flag/
21 Short-Wave Sea Surface Temperature (SST4) documentation https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/atbd/sst4/
33 Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/atbd/atbd_mod25.pdf
21 PO.DAAC Forum Page https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/forum/viewforum.php?f=18&sid=e2d67e5a01815fc6e39fcd2087ed8bc8
21 Data Use and Citation Policy https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/CitingPODAAC
32 HTTPS endpoint for data browse and download https://cmr.earthdata.nasa.gov/virtual-directory/collections/C1940473819-POCLOUD
21 Jupyter python notebook to create a gridded "data cube" https://github.com/podaac/tutorials/blob/master/notebooks/MODIS_L2P_SST_DataCube.ipynb
21 Browse granule search results in Earthdata Search https://search.earthdata.nasa.gov/search/granules?p=C1940473819-POCLOUD
21 GHRSST Project Office homepage http://www.ghrsst.org
21 Long-Wave Sea Surface Temperature (SST4) documentation https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/atbd/sst/
33 Documentation on the GDS version 2 format specification https://archive.podaac.earthdata.nasa.gov/podaac-ops-cumulus-docs/ghrsst/open/docs/GDS20r5.pdf
21 Release Notes https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/reprocessing/r2019/sst/

Tags

  • national-geospatial-data-asset
  • oceans
  • ngda
  • ocean-temperature
  • earth-science

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