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Full catalog/L3S_LEO_DY-STAR-v2.81
L3S_LEO_DY-STAR-v2.81·v2.81·dataset

How warm the sea surface is (daily, 0.02 degree)

GHRSST NOAA/STAR ACSPO v2.81 0.02 degree L3S Daily Dataset from LEO Satellites
ocean NASA POCLOUD Level 3 netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. Daily global maps of sea surface temperature just below the skin of the ocean, at a fine resolution of about 2 kilometers per cell.

How it's made. Combines temperature readings from many satellites at once (VIIRS, AVHRR, and MODIS across several spacecraft), merged and gridded into a single clear-sky daily product.

How & where you'd use it. Widely used for weather forecasting, ocean and climate monitoring, and any application that needs an accurate, up-to-date picture of how warm the sea surface is.

What's measured

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

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2000-02-24 → ongoing
  • Measured bySuomi-NPP (VIIRS) · NOAA-20 (VIIRS) · NOAA-21 (VIIRS) · METOP-A (AVHRR) · METOP-B (AVHRR) · METOP-C (AVHRR) · Terra (MODIS) · Aqua (MODIS)
  • 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 L3S_LEO_DY-STAR-v2.81 dataset produced by the NOAA Advanced Clear-Sky Processor for Ocean (ACSPO) system derives the Subskin Sea Surface Temperature (SST) from multiple instruments, including the VIIRS onboard the Suomi-NPP, NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 satellites, AVHRR onboard Metop-A, B , C satellites and MODIS onboard the Terra and Aqua satellites. The L3S-LEO is a family of multi-sensor super-collated (L3S) gridded 0.02º resolution SST products from low earth orbit (LEO) satellites. The L3S-LEO PM ( https://doi.org/10.5067/GHLPM-3S281 ) and AM ( https://doi.org/10.5067/GHLAM-3SS28 ) data include SSTs from afternoon (~1:30 am/pm) and mid-morning (~9:30 am/pm) satellites, respectively. The PM and AM SSTs, for both day (D) and night (N), and Terra MODIS SSTs, are further aggregated into a daily L3S-LEO-DY SST product. The L3S-DY-SST combines the both L3S-LEO-PM/AM SSTs into a single daily product. It covers from 2000-02-24 to present and is reported in one file per 24h interval. Data are in NetCDF4 format, compliant with the GHRSST Data Specification version 2 (GDS2). The v2.81 succeeds the v2.80 dataset (not available from the PO.DAAC) with the following improvements: (1) The L3S-LEO-PM input was updated from v2.80 to v2.81; and (2) ACSPO Terra MODIS SST is included from 2000-02-24 to 2021-12-31. The inclusion of Terra extends the availability of L3S-LEO-DY back to 2000-02-24 (from 2006-12-01 in v2.80). The SST diurnal warming effects from different daily observation times across the series of instruments have been corrected and are described in the publications by Jonasson et al., 2022 The Near Real Time (NRT) data are available with 6h latency, and replaced by the Re-ANalysis (RAN) files in 2 months, with identical file names. They can be differentiated by the file creation time and ancillary inputs. The data are validated against quality controlled in situ data from the NOAA in situ SST Quality Monitor (iQuam; https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/socd/sst/iquam), and monitored in another NOAA system, SST Quality Monitor (SQUAM; https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/socd/sst/squam)

Get the data

l3s_leo_dy-star-v2.81_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="L3S_LEO_DY-STAR-v2.81",
    version="2.81",
    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.