NOAA-11,12 POLAR ORBITING SATELLITES - AVHRR-MEASURED SKIN SURFACE TEMPERATURE (SMSST)

W. Emery (University of Colorado, USA)

Announced availability: 1 March 1995

Data Access

Satellite-measured Skin Surface Temperature (SMSST) maps are available on-line from the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research via anonymous FTP to ftp://ccar.Colorado.EDU/. Data files are located in subdirectory pub/coare/smsst. Data are also available upon request from NOAA's National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) in Silver Spring, MD (http://www.nodc.noaa.gov).

Beginning June 1996, data will also be archived at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, NC (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov) and at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO (http://dss.ucar.edu/pub/toga_coare/).

Background

The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) is a five-channel scanning radiometer that was installed on the NOAA-11 and NOAA-12 Polar Orbiting Satellites. The radiometer provides day and night imaging in the visible (VIS) and infrared (IR), sea surface temperature (SST) determination, estimation of heat budget components and identification of snow and sea ice. The near-IR channel (channel 3: 3.55-3.99 um) and the two IR channels (channel 4: 10.2-11.5 um; channel 5: 11.5-12.5 um) are used to compute SST.

Data File Information

The raster images (1024 x 512) are in Unix compressed format. The three directories (10day, 14day and monthly) contain composite SMSST maps for the TOGA COARE region of 10N to 10S and 140E to 180. SMSST was calculated for nighttime passes (9 pm to 9 am). Map sizes are 4096x2048 (2-byte) navigated to a 1 km resolution (subdirectory /pub/coare/smsst/1km), and 1024 x 512 (2-byte) navigated to 4 km resolution (subdirectory /pub/coare/smsst/4km).

The SMSST algorithm used is as follows: 

smsst = a1 + a2*t4 + a3*(t4-t5) + a4*(t4-t5)*(sec(zen)-1)

t4 = channel 4 brightness temp.
t5 = channel 5 brightness temp.
zen = satellite zenith angle
a* = coef.'s

NOAA-11 coef.'s
a1 = 62.748264
a2 = 0.7843099
a3 = 2.4847593
a4 = 0.3593804

NOAA-12 coef.'s
a1 = 57.416015
a2 = 0.8038953
a3 = 2.6409328
a4 = 0.4254607
For more information, please contact:

Phil Mislinski
Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research
Campus Box 431
Boulder, CO 80309
USA

email: mislinsk@smaug.colorado.edu
Phone: (303) 492-8868
FAX: (303) 492-2825

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