Evaluation of sea surface temperatures derived from the HY-1C and HY-1D satellites

Presented at the GHRSST XXIII international science team meeting, 27 June-1 July 2022, online and in-person (Barcelona). #GHRSST23

Short abstract

As one of the key payloads on the Chinese HaiYang (HY)-1C and HY-1D satellites, the Chinese ocean colour and temperature scanner (COCTS) was designed for global sea surface temperature (SST) and ocean colour detection. Global sea surface temperatures (SSTs) have been detecting by the COCTS instruments since September 2018. The SSTs derived from the COCTS on the HY-1C (COCTS/HY-1C) and HY-1D satellites (COCTS/HY-1D) and the nonlinear SST algorithm with corresponding coefficients will be introduced. The retrieval SSTs from Jan. 1, 2019 to Mar. 31, 2020 were evaluated by the in situ measurements from iQuam with root mean square errors (RMSEs) of 0.84 °C for daytime and 0.97 °C for nighttime and robust standard deviations (RSDs) of 0.73 °C for daytime and 0.72 °C for nighttime, respectively. RMSEs of 0.65 °C and 0.71 °C and RSDs of 0.51 °C and 0.47 °C were obtained for the daytime and nighttime SSTs of the COCTS/HY-1D recorded from April 26 to August 31, 2021, using a spatiotemporal matching window of 4 hours and 2.5 km. Daily gridded retrieval SSTs from COCTS on both HY-1C and HY-1D were compared with SSTs from the moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) on Terra satellite and the visible infrared imaging radiometer (VIIRS) on the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) satellite. Both daytime and nighttime SSTs from COCTS are consistent with those from MODIS and VIIRS.