GHRSST NOAA/STAR Metop-A AVHRR FRAC ACSPO v2.80 1km L2P Dataset (GDS version 2)

The MetOp First Generation (FG) is a European multi-satellite program jointly established by ESA and EUMETSAT, comprising three satellites, MetOp-A, -B and -C. The primary sensor onboard MetOp-FG, the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer/3 (AVHRR/3) contributed by NOAA, measures Earth emissions and reflectances in 5 out of 6 available bands (centered at 0.63, 0.83, 1.61, 3.7, 11 and 12 microns), in a swath of 2,600km from an 817km altitude. These data are collected in a Full Resolution Area Coverage (FRAC) mode, with pixel size of 1.1km at nadir. MetOp-A launched on 19 October 2006 is the first in the MetOp-FG series. The NOAA Advanced Clear-Sky Processor for Ocean (ACSPO) Level 2 Preprocessed (L2P) SST product is derived at the full AVHRR FRAC resolution and reported in 10 minute granules in NetCDF4 format, compliant with the GHRSST Data Specification version 2 (GDS2). Subskin SSTs are derived using the regression Nonlinear SST (NLSST) algorithm, which employs three bands (3.7, 11 and 12 microns) at night and two bands (11 and 12 microns) during the day. The ACSPO AVHRR FRAC L2P product is monitored and validated against quality controlled in situ data, provided by the NOAA in situ SST Quality Monitor system (iQuam; Xu and Ignatov, 2014, https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-13-00121.1), in another NOAA system, SST Quality Monitor (SQUAM; Dash et al, 2010, https://doi.org/10.1175/2010JTECHO756.1). SST imagery and clear-sky masking are continuously evaluated, and checked for consistency with other sensors and platforms, in the ACSPO Regional Monitor for SST (ARMS) system. MetOp-A orbital characteristics and AVHRR/3 sensor performance are tracked in the NOAA 3S system (He et al., 2016, https://doi.org/10.3390/rs8040346). The L2P Near Real Time (NRT) SST files are archived at PO.DAAC with 3-6 hours latency, and then replaced by the Re-ANalysis (RAN) SST after about 2 months later with identical file names. Two features can be used to identify them: different file name time stamps and netCDF global attribute metadata source=NOAA-NCEP-GFS for NRT and source=MERRA-2 for RAN. A reduced size (0.45GB/day), equal-angle gridded (0.02-deg resolution) ACSPO L3U product is also available.