Preliminary Study of Deriving Sea Surface Temperature from future GOES

An algorithm has been developed in the past two years at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS), University of Wisconsin-Madison, to derive sea surface temperature (SST) from the new generation of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES). This algorithm has been successfully implemented at the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) since the beginning of 1999 to produce hourly SST at 4-km resolution. This paper reviews the development of the GOES SST algorithm, emphasizing on the evolution and justification of procedures for detection of clouds, correction for atmospheric absorption, and treatment of nonblackbody sea surface emissivity.