Earth Data School
About
Full catalog/MODIS_AQUA_L3_SST_MID-IR_DAILY_4KM_NIGHTTIME_V2019.0
MODIS_AQUA_L3_SST_MID-IR_DAILY_4KM_NIGHTTIME_V2019.0·v2019.0·dataset

Nighttime sea surface temperature (Aqua, 4 km daily)

MODIS Aqua Level 3 SST MID-IR Daily 4km Nighttime V2019.0
ocean NASA POCLOUD Level 3 netCDF-4
In plain English

What it measures. Nighttime sea surface temperature worldwide, mapped onto a grid at about 4 km resolution. It captures the temperature of the ocean's thin surface skin.

How it's made. Produced from the MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite, using its mid-infrared channels at night; individual measurements are binned and mapped into a daily global grid.

How & where you'd use it. Useful for studying ocean dynamics, weather, and climate. The nighttime mid-infrared version tends to be more accurate because it avoids interference from sun glare.

What's measured

OCEANS › OCEAN TEMPERATURE › SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2002-07-03 → ongoing
  • Measured byAqua (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

Day and night spatially gridded (L3) global NASA skin sea surface temperature (SST) products from the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard the Aqua satellite. Average daily, weekly (8 day), monthly and annual skin SST products at are available at both 4.63 and 9.26 km spatial resolution. Aqua was launched by NASA on May 4, 2002, into a sun synchronous, polar orbit with a daylight ascending node at 13:30, formation flying in the A-train with other Earth Observation Satellites (EOS), to study the global dynamics of the Earth atmosphere, land and oceans. MODIS captures data in 36 spectral bands at a variety of spatial resolutions. Two SST products can be present in these files. The first is a skin SST produced for both day and night (NSST) observations, derived from the long wave IR 11 and 12 micron wavelength channels, using a modified nonlinear SST algorithm intended to provide continuity of SST derived from heritage and current NASA sensors. At night, a second SST product is generated using the mid-infrared 3.95 and 4.05 micron wavelength channels which are unique to MODIS; the SST derived from these measurements is identified as SST4. The SST4 product has lower uncertainty, but due to sun glint can only be used at night. To generate the L3 products the L2 pixels are binned into an integerized sinusoidal area grid (ISEAG) and mapped into an equidistant cylindrical (also known as Platte Carre projection. Additional projection detailed can be found at https://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/format/ The NASA MODIS L3 SST data products are generated by the NASA Ocean Biology Processing Group (OBPG) and Peter Minnett and his team at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS) are responsible for sea surface temperature algorithm development, error statistics and quality flagging. JPL acquires MODIS ocean L3 SST data from the OBPG and is the official Physical Oceanography Data Archive (PO.DAAC) for SST. The R2019.0 supersedes the previous v2014.1 datasets which can be found at https://doi.org/10.5067/MODAM-1D4N4

Get the data

modis_aqua_l3_sst_mid-ir_daily_4km_nighttime_v2019.0_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="MODIS_AQUA_L3_SST_MID-IR_DAILY_4KM_NIGHTTIME_V2019.0",
    version="2019.0",
    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.