A 40-year Sea Surface Temperature Climate Data Record from the ESA Climate Change Initiative

Short abstract

ESA’s Climate Change Initiative (CCI) will soon release the third major version of the SST CCI Climate Data Record (CDR) which will cover a 40-year period using data from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), Along Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR), Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR) instruments, Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR)-E and AMSR2. The dataset includes both single-sensor products at L2P, L3U, and L3C; plus a Level 4 SST analysis generated using the Met Office Operational Sea Surface Temperature and Ice Analysis (OSTIA) system. Version 3 of the SST CCI CDR will be the first to make use of data from AVHRR/1 instruments carried on board NOAA-6, -8, and -10 platforms. This will increase the data coverage in the 1980s and allow the dataset to extend back to 1980. The quality of the AVHRR retrievals has been improved by using a new biasaware optimal estimation (BAOE) technique and updated radiative transfer modelling including tropospheric dust which significantly reduces the SST biases due to dust aerosols seen in previous CDRs. Passive microwave AMSRE and AMSR2 data were previously available as an experimental produce from SST-CCI, but are now included in the main CDR for the first time. In comparison to the previous CDR, this new release will also use of full resolution MetOp data and include the dual-view SLSTR sensors. Complementary to the ESA CCI, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) is producing an Interim CDR (ICDR) to proving an ongoing extension in time of the SST-CCI CDR. The C3S ICDR is algorithmically equivalent to the CCI CDR and will switch from extending the current version 2 record to extending CCI version 3 during 2022.