Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/AMSRE-REMSS-L3U-v7a
AMSRE-REMSS-L3U-v7a·v7a·dataset

How warm the sea surface is (AMSR-E, gridded per-pass)

GHRSST Level 3U Global Subskin Sea Surface Temperature from the Advanced Scanning Microwave Radiometer - Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) on the NASA Aqua Satellite
ocean NASA POCLOUD Level 3 netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. How warm the sea surface is, placed onto a regular map grid for each satellite pass, with cloud-penetrating coverage.

How it's made. Retrieved from the AMSR-E microwave radiometer on NASA's Aqua satellite, processed by Remote Sensing Systems and arranged on a uniform grid, with near-real-time and final versions.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for mapping ocean temperatures over time for weather, ocean, and climate research where gridded data is easier to work with.

What's measured

OCEANS › OCEAN TEMPERATURE › SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE › SUB-SKIN SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2002-06-01 → 2011-10-04
  • Measured byAqua (AMSR-E)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsnetCDF-4
  • StatusACTIVE

What you can do with it

  • Watch sea-surface temperature and marine heatwaves
  • Spot algal blooms and ocean-colour shifts
  • Support fisheries and coastal monitoring
Official description

The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) was launched on 4 May 2002, aboard NASA's Aqua spacecraft. The National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) provided AMSR-E to NASA as an indispensable part of Aqua's global hydrology mission. Over the oceans, AMSR-E is measuring a number of important geophysical parameters, including sea surface temperature (SST), wind speed, atmospheric water vapor, cloud water, and rain rate. A key feature of AMSR-E is its capability to see through clouds, thereby providing an uninterrupted view of global SST and surface wind fields. Remote Sensing Systems (RSS, or REMSS) is the provider of these SST data for the Group for High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (GHRSST) Project, performs a detailed processing of AMSR-E instrument data in two stages. The first stage produces a near-real-time (NRT) product (identified by "_rt_" within the file name) which is made as available as soon as possible. This is generally within 3 hours of when the data are recorded. Although suitable for many timely uses the NRT products are not intended to be archive quality. "Final" data (currently identified by "v7" within the file name) are processed when RSS receives the atmospheric model National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Final Analysis (FNL) Operational Global Analysis. The NCEP wind directions are particularly useful for retrieving more accurate SSTs and wind speeds. This dataset adheres to the GHRSST Data Processing Specification (GDS) version 2 format specifications.

Get the data

amsre-remss-l3u-v7a_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AMSRE-REMSS-L3U-v7a",
    version="7a",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from POCLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.