Full-swath Sea Surface Temperature (SST) derived from data acquired by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) sensor on-board the Suomi-National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) satellite produces significant overlap between consecutive orbits at all latitudes. In this study, we use those overlap regions to evaluate VIIRS SST, as inconsistencies between SST values from consecutive orbits are indications of likely degraded quality. The studies investigate two sources of inconsistencies: those resulting from the response of the SST equations when observing a scene from differing view angles and those caused by undetected data contamination. This study will present results for two VIIRS SST products: one from the Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO), which is assimilated in the Navy Ocean Models, and the Advanced Clear-Sky Processor for Oceans (ACSPO) product from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR). Global statistics based on drifting buoys for both NAVOCEANO and NOAA products complete the analysis.

Date Published: 19 May 2015
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 9459, Ocean Sensing and Monitoring VII, 94590S (19 May 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2179606

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9459:
Ocean Sensing and Monitoring VII
Weilin W. Hou; Robert A. Arnone, Editor(s)