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Full catalog/AVHRR_OI-NCEI-L4-GLOB-v2.1
AVHRR_OI-NCEI-L4-GLOB-v2.1·v2.1·dataset

How warm the sea surface is, blended daily map

GHRSST Level 4 AVHRR_OI Global Blended Sea Surface Temperature Analysis (GDS2) from NCEI
ocean NASA POCLOUD Level 4 netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. A daily, gap-free worldwide map of how warm the sea surface is, on a quarter-degree grid. Gaps between observations are smoothly filled in to give a complete picture.

How it's made. Produced at NOAA by blending satellite readings from AVHRR sensors with in-water measurements from ships, buoys, and Argo floats, using statistical interpolation; a quick preliminary version is replaced by a refined one after two weeks.

How & where you'd use it. Widely used for monitoring ocean temperature, feeding weather and climate models, and tracking long-term ocean warming.

What's measured

OCEANS › OCEAN TEMPERATURE › SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE › FOUNDATION SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2016-01-01 → ongoing
  • 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) · METOP-A (AVHRR-3) · METOP-B (AVHRR-3) · 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 dataset is 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, buoys, and Argo floats above 5m depth), and the specific datasets employed may change over time. In the regions with sea-ice concentration higher than 30%, freezing points of seawater are used to generate proxy SSTs. A preliminary version of this dataset is produced in near-real time (1-day latency), and then replaced with a final version after 2 weeks. The v2.1 (Huang et al. 2021) is updated from the previous AVHRR_OI-NCEI-L4-GLOB-v2.0 data. Major improvements include: 1) In-situ ship and buoy data changed from the NCEP Traditional Alphanumeric Codes (TAC) to the NCEI merged TAC + Binary Universal Form for the Representation (BUFR) data, with large increases of buoy data included to correct satellite SST biases; 2) Addition of Argo float observed SST data as well, for further correction of satellite SST biases; 3) Satellite input from the METOP-A and NOAA-19 to METOP-A and METOP-B, removing degraded satellite data; 4) Revised ship-buoy SST corrections for improved accuracy; and 5) Revised sea-ice-concentration to SST conversion to remove warm biases in the Arctic region. These updates only apply to data after January 1st, 2016. The data pre 2016 are still the same as v2.0 except for metadata upgrades. NCEI has panned to update the entire dataset from 1982 to fix the In-Situ data ingest and bias correction which exist prior 2016.

Get the data

avhrr_oi-ncei-l4-glob-v2.1_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="AVHRR_OI-NCEI-L4-GLOB-v2.1",
    version="2.1",
    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.