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Full catalog/AVHRR_OI-NCEI-L4-GLOB-v2.0
AVHRR_OI-NCEI-L4-GLOB-v2.0·v2.0·dataset

Blended global sea surface temperature maps

GHRSST Level 4 AVHRR_OI Global Blended Sea Surface Temperature Analysis (GDS version 2) from NCEI
ocean NASA POCLOUD Level 4 netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. Daily, gap-free global maps of sea surface temperature on a roughly 25-kilometer grid, blending many sources into one smooth, complete picture.

How it's made. Produced by combining AVHRR satellite measurements with ship and buoy observations using a statistical interpolation method, with ice information used to fill in near sea ice; built at NOAA.

How & where you'd use it. Widely used for weather and climate analysis, ocean monitoring, and long-term temperature records reaching back to 1981.

What's measured

OCEANS › OCEAN TEMPERATURE › SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE › BLENDED SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span1981-09-01 → 2020-04-05
  • Measured byNOAA-11 (AVHRR-2) · NOAA-14 (AVHRR-2) · NOAA-9 (AVHRR-2) · NOAA-16 (AVHRR-3) · NOAA-17 (AVHRR-3) · NOAA-19 (AVHRR-3) · BUOYS (DRIFTING BUOYS) · NOAA-7 (AVHRR-2)
  • Processing levelLevel 4
  • 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

A Group for High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (GHRSST) global Level 4 sea surface temperature analysis produced daily on a 0.25 degree grid at the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. This product uses optimal interpolation (OI) by interpolating and extrapolating SST observations from different sources, resulting in a smoothed complete field. The sources of data are satellite (AVHRR) and in situ platforms (i.e., ships and buoys), and the specific datasets employed may change over. At the marginal ice zone, sea ice concentrations are used to generate proxy SSTs. A preliminary version of this file is produced in near-real time (1-day latency), and then replaced with a final version after 2 weeks. Note that this is the AVHRR-ONLY (AVHRR-OI), available from September 1, 1981, but there is a companion SST product that includes microwave satellite data, available from June 2002.

Get the data

avhrr_oi-ncei-l4-glob-v2.0_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AVHRR_OI-NCEI-L4-GLOB-v2.0",
    version="2.0",
    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.