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Full catalog/G18-ABI-L3C-ACSPO-v2.90
G18-ABI-L3C-ACSPO-v2.90·v2.90·dataset

How warm the sea surface is off western America (GOES-18)

GHRSST L3C NOAA/ACSPO GOES-18/ABI West America Region Sea Surface Temperature v2.90 dataset
ocean NASA POCLOUD Level 3 active netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. How warm the sea surface is off the west coast of the Americas, reported as both a just-below-the-surface and a depth temperature on a regular map grid.

How it's made. A gridded (Level 3) version made from the ABI imager on the GOES-18 weather satellite using NOAA's ACSPO system, producing 24 hourly maps per day.

How & where you'd use it. Supports weather forecasting, marine and fisheries work, and ocean-climate monitoring. Values are validated against ship and buoy measurements.

What's measured

OCEANS › OCEAN TEMPERATURE › SEA SURFACE TEMPERATUREOCEANS › OCEAN TEMPERATURE › SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE › SEA SURFACE SUBSKIN TEMPERATURE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2022-06-07 → ongoing
  • Measured byGOES-18 (ABI)
  • Processing levelLevel 3
  • Spatial extent163, -60, -77, 60
  • 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 G18-ABI-L3C-ACSPO-v2.90 dataset produced by the NOAA ACSPO system is used to derive Subskin and Depth Sea Surface Temperature (SST) from the ABI sensor onboard the G18 satellite. NOAA’s G18 (aka GOES-T before launch) was launched on March 1, 2022, replacing G17 as GOES West in Jan'2023. It is the third satellite in the US GOES–R Series, the Western Hemisphere’s most sophisticated weather-observing and environmental-monitoring system. The ABI is the primary instrument on the GOES-R Series for imaging Earth’s weather, oceans, and environment. The G18-ABI-L3C-ACSPO-v2.90 dataset is a gridded version of the G18-ABI-L2P-ACSPO-v2.90 dataset (https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/G18-ABI-L2P-ACSPO-v2.90). The L3C (Level 3 Collated) outputs 24 hourly granules per day, with a daily volume of 0.7 GB/day. Valid SSTs are found over oceans, sea, lakes or rivers, with fill values reported elsewhere. All valid SSTs in L3C are recommended for users, although data over internal waters may not have enough in situ data to be adequately validated. Per GDS2 specifications, two additional Sensor-Specific Error Statistics layers (bias and standard deviation) are reported in each pixel with valid SST. The ACSPO G18/ABI L3C product is validated against iQuam in situ data (Xu and Ignatov, 2014) and continuously monitored in the NOAA SQUAM system (Dash et al, 2010). The NRT files are replaced with Delayed Mode (DM) files, with a latency of ~2-months. File names remain unchanged, and DM vs NRT can be identified by different time stamps and global attributes inside the files (MERRA instead of GFS for atmospheric profiles, and same day CMC L4 analyses in DM instead of one-day delayed in NRT processing).

Get the data

g18-abi-l3c-acspo-v2.90_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="G18-ABI-L3C-ACSPO-v2.90",
    version="2.90",
    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.