MISST – The Multi-sensor Improved Sea Surface Temperature for GODAE

The GODAE High-Resolution Sea Surface Temperature Pilot-Project is an international effort to produce the next generation of satellite-derived sea surface temperature (SST) through the combination of complementary information from multiple infrared and microwave sensors. The Multi-Sensor Improved Sea Surface Temperature (MISST) project comprises the US component of the effort. The project funded through the National Ocean Partnership Project (NOPP) brings together a leading group of partners from government (NOAA, Navy), industry (Remote Sensing Systems), and academia (University of Colorado, University of Miami, University of Maryland, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution). Overall project goals include developing a new multi-sensor based satellite SST product and demonstrating its impact on operational applications.

Current project activities include deriving detailed error characteristics for the input satellite products, developing procedures to account for diurnal warming and skin layer effects, incorporating this information into the component satellite products, and refining techniques for merging the data. Comprehensive characterization of the retrieval errors is required for the analysis techniques and product application. Error estimates for the infrared and microwave satellite products have been derived as functions of time and both satellite and environmental parameters including aerosol content, wind speed, water vapor, and surface temperature. Blending data from different measurement times and effective measurement depths requires consideration of diurnal and skin layer effects. Simplified parameterizations using inputs readily available from satellite data have been derived and evaluated. These error and diurnal warming estimates are being integrated along with other ancillary data into a new enhanced “Level 2P” format for each sensor product and distributed throughout the community.

This paper will describe the overall status of the project and these research results.